Summary

This chapter introduced the basics of ADO.NET and its components. You learned why ADO.NET is a much better data access technology than previous technologies. ADO.NET provides data providers such as OleDb, Sql, and Odbc to work with OLE-DB, SQL Server, and ODBC data sources, respectively. After that, you learned about various ADO.NET objects such as Connection, Command, DataAdapter, DataReader, DataSet, and DataView as well as the relationships between them. For example, DataSet is a collection of DataTable objects. A DataTable can attach to a DataView, which can later be bound with data-bound controls. Further, using a DataView's filter and sort properties, you can provide different views of a DataSet and a DataView.

At the end of this chapter, you learned how to write a simple application to read data from Microsoft Access and SQL Server databases using ADO.NET.

Chapter 2 is heavily based on the VS .NET IDE. It covers how to take advantage of VS .NET IDE wizards and utilities to develop database applications without writing much code. You'll probably find this chapter exciting because you'll learn to build fully functioning database applications by simply writing a couple of lines of code.