ADO.NET's Disconnected Architecture//theory+program

Beside availability of an open connection for the data all of the time which require that applications should connect to the data source, read required data and disconnect the connection, process the data, reconnect and save the changes, we have new disconnected method. Using disconnected RecordSets is tedious with ADO due to marshalling issues. All this was leading to disconnected architecture for quite some time now. We have just seen how to use a Connection object, a Command object and a DataReader to perform database operations. This is good enough when you want to process only one row at a time. In practice however, one needs to process or display multiple rows at a time. In such cases, it is difficult to use the DataReader. Therefore, ADO.NET provides other objects for such operations. These objects are mostly use in a disconnected environment.

The DataAdapter Object

Data adapters are an integral part of the ADO.NET managed providers. They are the set of objects used to communicate between a data source and a DataSet. Adapters are used to exchange data between a data source and a DataSet. Mostly, this would mean reading data from a database into a DataSet, and then writing changed data from the DataSet back to the database. The DataAdapter, however, is more capable. It can move data between any source and a DataSet. For example, there could be an adapter that moves data between a Microsoft Exchange server and a DataSet.

Generally, we can configure the DataAdapter so that we can specify what data to move into and out of the DataSet. Often this takes the form of references to SQL statements or stored procedures that are invoked to read or write to a database. ADO.NET has two primary data adapters for use with databases:

• The OleDbDataAdapter: This object is suitable for use with any data source exposed by an OLEDB provider.


• The SqlDataAdapter: The SQLDataAdapter object is specific to SQL Server. Because it does not have to go through an OLEDB layer, it is faster than the OleDbDataAdapter. However, it can only be used with SQL Server 7.0 or later.

DataSets//imp

The DataSet is a memory-resident representation of data including tables, relationships between the tables, and both unique and foreign key constraints. It is used for working with and transporting data in a disconnected environment. The DataSet object can be thought of as the heart of ADO.NET's disconnected architecture. The DataSet object is an in memory copy of the data stored by a DataAdapter. The structure of the DataSet is like a relational database

There are four important characteristics of the DataSet:

·         It's not provider-specific. It's impossible to tell by looking at the DataSet, or at the objects contained within the DataSet, which provider was used to retrieve the data or what the original data source was. The DataSet provides a consistent programming model regardless of the data source.

·         It's always disconnected. Information is retrieved from the data source and placed in the DataSet using another ADO.NET object—the DataAdapter. At no point does a DataSet directly reference a Connection object.

·         It can track changes made to its data. The DataSet contains multiple versions of each row of data in the tables, which allows changes to be updated back to the data source using a DataAdapter object, changes to be cancelled.

·         It can contain multiple tables. Unlike the traditional ADO Recordset, the DataSet approximates a relational database in memory.

Another important feature of the DataSet is that it uses XML to represent the data.
The structure of the DataSet, its tables, rows, columns, and everything else can be defined as an XML schema. A DataSet can read and write XML schemas using its ReadXmlSchema and WriteXmlSchema methods. XML is used to store and transmit data of all kinds. As XML is an almost universally accepted format, the data can be transported to or received from any platform using a DataSet.

The DataSet is populated with:

• A DataAdapter's Fill method


• Using the ReadXml method


• Manually

DataSets exist as both untyped and strongly typed. Strongly typed DataSets are a collection of automatically generated classes that inherit from the DataSet, DataTable, and DataRow classes, and provide additional properties, methods, and events based on the DataSet schema. A strongly typed DataSet can make programs more intuitive to write and allows the Visual Studio .NET IDE to provide functionality such as autocomplete and for the compiler to detect type mismatch errors and misspelled names during compilation rather than at runtime.

The data stored in the DataSet can be manipulated programmatically and populated using a DataAdapter or from XML documents or streams. The actual DataSet schema can be created programmatically, read from a data source, read from an XML schema, or inferred from an XML document or stream. The DataSet can easily be serialized to XML for marshalling between processes with .NET remoting or to meet persistent storage requirements.