Suggested Practices

Objective 1.1: Design Appropriate Data Access Technologies

• Practice 1 Locate non-SQL data sources in your organization, such as Access databases or Excel spreadsheets. Create a test .NET Windows application that makes a connection to these data sources using the MDAC data providers discussed in Lesson 1. Use the ODBC and ADO APIs to create the connection. Pay attention to differences in the connection strings for each provider.

• Practice 2 Create an HTTP endpoint that references the stored procedure created in Lab 1 for Lesson 2. This time, alter the values for the CREATE ENDPOINT statement so that it returns data as T-SQL instead. Also, make a change so that batches are not enabled. Note the differences in the output that is generated.

Objective 1.2: Design an Appropriate Data Access Object Model

• Practice 1 Create a test Windows .NET application that reads data from a non-SQL data source using the ODBCDataReader object. The application should iterate through the data and display the results in a DataGridView control.

• Practice 2 Create a test Windows .NET application that will access the AdventureWorks database and execute the following query:

   SELECT name, productnumber, listprice FROM production.product             FOR XML AUTO 

  The application should use an XMLDataReader object to return the data as an XML stream. Display the data on the Windows form using either a listbox control, textbox control, or message box.