ADO.net notes and data adapter

ADO.NET

ADO.NET is the latest extension of the Universal Data Access technology. Its architecture is similar to classic ADO in some respects, but a great departure in others.ADO.NET is much simpler, less dependent on the data source, more flexible, and the format of data is textual instead of binary. Textual formatted data is more verbose than binary formatted data, and this makes it comparably larger. The tradeoff is ease of transportation through disconnected networks, flexibility, and speed.

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Because data in ADO.NET is based on XML, Managed Providers are required to serve data in a proper XML format. Once a developer has written data access code, they only need to change a few parameters to connect to a different data source.

ADO.NET is based on a connection-less principle that is designed to ease the connection limitations that developers have traditionally had to deal with when creating distributed solutions. You no longer need to maintain a connection, or even worry about many of the connection options that developers had to deal with in the past.

A complete .NET data provider includes the following classes:

Connection

Connects to the data source.

Command

Executes commands against the data source.

DataReader

A forward-only, read-only connected result set.

ParameterCollection

Stores all parameters related to a Command and the mappings of both table and column names to the DataSet columns.

Parameter

Defines parameters for parameterized SQL statements and stored procedures.

Transaction

Groups statements modifying data into work units that are either committed in their entirety or cancelled.

DataAdapter

Bridges the connected components to the disconnected components, allowing a DataSet and DataTable to be filled from the data source and later reconciled with the data source.