Part IV
Building Effective Applications with ADO.NET
Chapter 13
Building Effective Windows-Based Applications
You should now feel comfortable working with the various objects in the ADO.NET object model. Need to create a DataSet and store the results of a query in a DataTable using a DataAdapter? No problem. Need to add a DataRelation so that you can navigate between parent and child data in two related DataTable objects? Child's play. Need to create the logic required to submit changes back to the database? Piece of cake.
Although these skills are important, they're still not enough to build an application that allows a user to view and modify the contents of a database. You also need to build a user interface.
In this chapter, we'll use the knowledge you gained from previous chapters to discuss building effective Windows-based applications. In the first part of the chapter, we'll look at the stages of building a sample application that is similar to the one we created in Chapter 2 using the Data Form Wizard. Along the way, I'll talk about how you can use data binding to save time while you're developing the user interface for your application. We'll also examine different strategies for updating and connection strategies. Finally I'll discuss different ways to work with binary large object (BLOB) data in a Windows-based application.