Chapter 16. Data Binding Basics

16. Data Binding Basics

Much of what Windows Forms applications do is to provide users with a nice way to work with data. Much of the data that users work with resides in a wide variety of data stores, commonly databases and file systems. The equally wide variety of technologies to expose data includes ADO.NET, native data access APIs, custom objects, and even web services. It's the job of Windows Forms applications to interact with these data sources to read data from a data store, present it, provide a way to edit it, and write any changes back to the data store.

In the face of so many data stores and data access APIs, Windows Forms simplifies life with the concept of a data source. This abstraction enables Windows Forms to treat disparate data stores and access technologies in a unified, consistent way. The data source is also the cornerstone of a rich technology whose sole purpose is to simplify the integration of Windows Forms applications with data. This technology is known as data binding.