Introduction to ADO.NET

ADO.NET is a collection of objects designed to present the developer with a unified, object-oriented interface to relational data stores such as SQL Server, Oracle, and Microsoft Access. ADO.NET consists of several classes that are shared among all data providers such as the DataSet class and base classes such as the DbConnection class and the DbDataReader class. The other portion of ADO.NET is the portion supplied by each data provider. For each data provider, there is a set of classes that interface directly with that data type. For example, there are classes that are specific to SQL Server, to Oracle, to OLE DB data sources, and to ODBC data sources. However, because each of these classes all inherit from common base classes and implement standard interfaces, your experience with one data provider can be reused in working with a different provider.