Why a New Object Library for Data Access?

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A database application programming interface (API) is a software library that programmers use to perform useful work with a database. Prior to Microsoft.NET, many Web developers on the Microsoft platform used a database API called ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), a COM library that enabled access to data sources.

A notoriously cranky lot, database programmers tend to be irked when the database access API they use is changed. This is because so much depends on the database layer operating correctly and efficiently . The situation is exacerbated when the current database API works well and the new API doesn't provide many compelling benefits.

The version of ADO used by application developers prior to Microsoft.NET worked well for building client/server and traditional Web applications. But the world of application development continues to evolve, and this evolution demands that the tools we use evolve with it. For example, you can manipulate a resultset in the absence of a dedicated database connection in both ADO.old and ADO.NET. In contrast, only ADO.NET provides support for a new type of resultset object (the DataSet), which is relatively easy to create, always disconnected, universally available across any data provider, and powerful.

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