Microsoft has pledged its commitment and resources to making .NET a pervasive component of life in our technological society-ignore .NET at your own peril. The bottom line is you need to learn .NET if you want to remain competitive in today's-and tomorrow's- marketplace .

In a nutshell , .NET is a completely new framework for writing many types of applications. The applications you can write using .NET include Windows applications and Web-based applications. You can use .NET to develop systems composed of interconnected services that communicate with each other over the Internet.

In addition, you can use .NET to create applications that run on devices such as handheld computers and cellular phones. Although other languages allow you to develop such applications, .NET was designed with the interconnected network in mind.

The .NET Framework consists of three primary components :

• Development Languages and Tools The development languages that enable you to write .NET programs include C#, Visual Basic .NET (VB .NET), and Managed C++. Microsoft also has a Rapid Application Development (RAD) tool called Visual Studio .NET (VS .NET) that allows you to develop programs in an integrated development environment (IDE). You'll use C# and VS .NET in this book.

• Common Language Runtime (CLR) CLR manages your running code and provides services such as memory management, thread management (which allows you to perform multiple tasks in parallel), and remoting (which allows objects in one application to communicate with objects in another application). The CLR also enforces strict safety and accuracy of your executable code to ensure that no tampering occurs.

• Framework Base Class Library The Framework Base Class Library is an extensive collection of code written by Microsoft that you can use in your own programs. For example, among many other functions, the Framework Base Class Library contains code that allows you to develop Windows applications, access directories and files on disk, interact with databases, and send and receive data across a network.

Who Should Read This Book?

This book was written for programmers who already know C#. It contains everything you need to know to master database programming with C#. No prior experience of databases is assumed, but if you already have some knowledge of database software such as SQL Server or Oracle, you'll be off to a running start.

How to Use This Book

This book is divided into three parts . In Part 1, "Introduction to ADO.NET and Databases," you'll learn everything you need to know about databases. You'll also be introduced to ADO.NET, which enables your C# programs to interact with a database. In Part 2, "Fundamental Database Programming with ADO.NET," you'll learn the C# programming with ADO.NET from the ground up. In Part 3, "Advanced Database Programming with ADO.NET," you'll go beyond the basics to learn programming techniques needed by professional database developers.

The following sections describe the chapters in detail.

Part 1: "Introduction to ADO.NET and Databases"

In Chapter 1, "Introduction to Database Programming with ADO.NET," you'll see how to use ADO.NET in a C# program to interact with a database. You also learn about Microsoft's RAD tool, Visual Studio .NET. Finally, you'll see how to use the extensive documentation from Microsoft that comes with .NET and SQL Server.

In Chapter 2, "Introduction to Databases," you'll learn the details of what databases are and how they are used to store information. You'll see the use of a SQL Server database named Northwind. This database contains the information for the fictitious Northwind Company, which sells food products. This database is one of the example databases that is typically installed with SQL Server.

In Chapter 3, "Introduction to the Structured Query Language," you'll learn how to use the Structured Query Language (SQL) to access a database. You'll see how you use SQL to interact with the Northwind database, and how to retrieve and modify information stored in that database.

In Chapter 4, "Introduction to Transact-SQL Programming," you'll be introduced to programming with Microsoft's Transact-SQL. Transact -SQL enables you to write programs that contain SQL statements, along with standard programming constructs such as variables , conditional logic, loops , procedures, and functions.

In Chapter 5, "Overview of the ADO.NET Classes," you'll get an overview of the ADO.NET classes. You'll also see a C# program that connects to a database, stores the rows locally, disconnects from the database, and then reads the contents of those local rows while disconnected from the database. This ability to store a local copy of rows retrieved from the database is one of the main strengths of ADO.NET.

In Chapter 6, "Introducing Windows Applications and ADO.NET," you'll be introduced to Windows applications. A Windows application takes advantage of displaying and using the mouse and keyboard for input. Windows provides graphical items such as menus , text boxes, and radio buttons so you can build a visual interface that will be easy to use. You'll see how to build Windows applications that interact with the Northwind database.