Thursday 11 April 2013

Introduction to ADO.NET

ADO.NET is a set of computer software components that programmers can use to access data and data services. It is a part of the base class library that is included with the Microsoft .Net Framework. It is commonly used by programmers to access and modify data stored in relational database systems, though it can also access data in non-relational database systems, though it can also access data in non-relational sources. ADO.NET is a set of classes that are organized in a number of namespaces. These namespaces provide developers access to databases to retrieve and update data. The classes of ADO.NET provide us with the means to access databases and execute T-SQL code that retrieves, inserts, updates and deletes data.

ADO.NET Data Architecture
  • Dataset : The dataset is a disconnected, in- memory representation of data. It can be considered as a local copy of the relevant portions f the database. The DataSet is persisted in memory and the data in it can be manipulated and updated independent of the database.

  • Data Provider: The Data Provider is responsible for providing and maintaining the connection to the database. A DataProvider is a set of related components that work  together to provide data in an efficient and performance driven manner. The .NET Framework currently comes wit two DataProviders: the SQL Data Provider which is designed only to work with Microsoft's SQL Server 7.0 or later and the OleDb DataProvider which allows us to connect to other types of databases like Access and Oracle.

Started learning ADO.net

     As I have just completed with Console applications and Windows applications I have started practicing ADO.net from today. 
     ADO.net is a set of classes that expose data access services to the .net programmer. ADO.net provides consistent access to data sources such as Microsoft SQL server, as well as data sources exposed through OLE DB and XML.
     ADO.net provides libraries for Data Source communication under the following namespaces
  • System.Data
  • System.Data.Oledb
  • System.Data.SqlClient
  • System.Data.OracleClient
  • System.Data.Odbc