INFO: Roadmap for ADO.NET

This article provides a way to learn about ADO.NET. Roadmap articles provide links to useful information, including online documentation, Microsoft Knowledge Base articles, and Microsoft white papers to help you learn about a Microsoft product or technology.

For additional information about data access using XML in the .NET Development Platform, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Overview

ADO.NET is the data access architecture that is provided by the .NET Framework. It provides classes for high performance, scalable, disconnected access to your data in addition to interoperability with data in XML documents.

The following Visual Studio .NET Help topics (click Help, and then click the Contents menu) provide an overview of ADO.NET:

• Visual Studio .NET
• .NET Framework
• Programming the .NET Framework
• Accessing Data with ADO.NET
• Overview of ADO.NET
• Design Goals for ADO.NET
• ADO.NET Architecture

For overview information about ADO.NET, refer to the following Microsoft Web site:

ADO.NET Roadmap Articles

The following sections describe various ADO.NET components and technologies. In addition, each section includes a link to a corresponding Roadmap article if one is available.

.NET Data Providers

.NET data providers are a set of classes that provide access to a back-end database or data source. The .NET Framework includes two data providers:

• A data provider that accesses databases through OLE DB.
• A data provider that provides direct, high performance access to Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 and later.

Additional data providers will be available on the Internet and from third-party vendors, and an SDK is available for writing your own data provider. Each data provider has the familiar Connection, Command, and Parameter objects, and the new DataReader and Transaction objects. For additional information about directly manipulating databases using these classes, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

ADO.NET DataSet, DataView, DataViewManager

The DataSet object is a disconnected data store and it is the central object in ADO.NET. It can contain multiple DataTable objects and relate them by using DataRelation objects. With DataRelation objects, you can also create hierarchical navigation between parent and child DataTable objects. The DataView object provides a sorted, filtered view on a DataTable. With the DataViewManager object, you can specify sorting and filtering over the entire DataTable hierarchy in the DataSet. For additional information about how to programmatically manipulate these classes, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

ADO.NET DataAdapters

The DataSet has replaced the disconnected storage component of the ADO Recordset, but it cannot read or write to a data source. The DataAdapter is an object that is provided by each .NET data provider to fulfill this role. It manages Connection, Command, and DataReader objects to read data into a DataSet and to write modifications back to the data source. For additional information about how to use the DataAdapter object, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

DataSets and Web Services

With Web Services, you can expose function calls over the Internet or over an intranet by passing data as XML. Visual Studio .NET supports creating and consuming Web services, even on non-Microsoft platforms. You can pass a DataSet object as an XML document between application tiers through a Web Service. This stateless protocol is very scalable and is well-suited to the disconnected nature of a DataSet. For additional information about how to use the DataSets with Web Services, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Windows Forms Data Binding

Windows Forms components can bind to arrays, collections, and the ADO.NET DataSet, DataTable, DataView, and DataViewManager objects. For additional information about the use of Windows Forms data binding by using these classes, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Web Forms Data Binding

Web Forms include various different binding mechanisms. Components can bind to the ADO.NET DataReader, DataSet, DataTable, DataView, and DataViewManager objects. For additional information about Web Forms data binding by using these classes, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Typed DataSets and Visual Data Tools

The Visual Studio .NET designers provide powerful tools that generate code as you graphically manipulate designer elements. In addition, you can make custom modifications to the code that are reflected in the designers. ADO.NET objects are no exception; with the built-in visual data tools, you can create ADO.NET objects by using a drag-and-drop operation to moving database tables into your applications. You can graphically manipulate their properties and generate a custom DataSet class (which is a typed DataSet) from them.

When you are using the typed DataSet, you access DataTable objects and DataColumn objects as properties instead of as members of a collection; because of this, you can use Intellisense to choose table and field names, which provides you with compile-time confirmation that the names are correct. In addition, you can perform property-based lookups much faster than collection-based lookups, which provides you with additional run-time benefits.

With typed DataSet objects, you can also perform design-time data binding and eliminate schema queries against the data source (the schema is determined at design-time and built into the class itself). Because typed DataSet objects derive from the standard DataSet class, you can pass a typed DataSet to any property or method that takes a standard DataSet. For additional information about typed DataSets and the Visual Studio .NET visual data tools, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

DataSets and XML

XML is at the core of the .NET Framework. DataSet objects can read and write XML by converting between hierarchical and relational formats. They also interact with the XmlDataDocument object thereby providing a fully synchronized view of the same data both hierarchically (through the XmlDataDocument) and relationally (through the DataSet). For additional information about DataSets and XML, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Using ADO in .NET

When you migrate your application to the .NET platform, you do not have to migrate each technology at once. You can migrate some parts of the application to use the .NET Framework while using existing technologies through the COM interoperability layer (COM Interop). For additional information, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Troubleshooting

If you experience problems or if you have questions, you can refer to the MSDN newsgroups where you can share your experiences with your peers. You can also use the Microsoft Knowledge Base where you can search for articles about specific issues.