Can you give some code sample, what do you mean by its own data provider exactly? APIs that required IServiceProvider are usually meant for internal usage only. There are ways around it but it usually is a bit of a code smell to do so.

Dear Daniel,

Thanks a lot for your reply. My custom module is used to retrieve lists of documents to populate different tabs. Those documents are stored in a document management system. I am usinig its API to retrieve the necessary data for my module, hence my need for an abstract DataContext Class to link with DataProvider Class that handles the API calls to the document management system. Here is my code:

public abstract class MfilesDataContext
{

    #region "Shared/Static Methods"

    // singleton reference to the instantiated object 
    private static MfilesDataContext objProvider;

    // static constructor
    static MfilesDataContext()
    {
        CreateProvider();
    }

    // dynamically create provider
    private static void CreateProvider()
    {
        objProvider = (MfilesDataProvider)DotNetNuke.Framework.Reflection.CreateObject("mfiles", "Brs.Modules.MFiles.Data", "");
        //I have a warning here: "reflection.CreateObject(string, string, string) is obsolete. deprecated in DotNetNuke 9.11.3. Please use overload with IServiceProvider. Scheduled for removal in v11.0.0"
    }

    // return the provider
    public static MfilesDataContext Instance()
    {
        return objProvider;
    }

    #endregion

    #region "Abstract methods"

    public abstract IQueryable GetViews(string VaultName);

etc.

     #endregion

    }
}

The devil is in the details here, but why even use reflection for this?

I am no expert on the subject as I have been using EntityFramework in my own modules for many years. But would the patterns decribed in DAL2 work for your use case. See https://www.dnnsoftware.com/wiki/dal-2

This code looks like the common DNN 4.x and 5.x patterns, also known as "DAL" which exposed certain things in a way that you had to use reflection and abstract classes, but the reality is that you don't need to do it that way any more.

My suggestion would be to look at the DAL 2 Pattern, or if you want a simple example this is a DAL2 way of doing data acess - https://github.com/IowaCo...ContentRepository.cs

Most likely you can just do a DAL 2 implementation and delete that older class.

Dear Daniel and Mitchel,

Thank you very much! An eye opener! 

Indeed, this module was originally developed for DNN 4 and went trough all updates since. This time, I used Chris templates to make it as a SPA module and did not realize that I simply need to call my DataProvider instance from the Repositary class that inherits ServiceLocator. All is in order now.

All the best.