The linguists in the crowd are certain to grind their teeth while they read this chapter. They would argue the following:
"The technical community leaves no room on their bookshelf forthe honorable lexicon. It's enough that they abuse the use of acronyms as a way to shorten sentences. At their whim, they repurpose terms such as ˜mouse,' ˜window,' and ˜scroll.' They include capital letters in the middle of terms just to identify syllables. Those tech nical folks can't even use the term data correctly. Don't they know that the term data was intended to be used as the plural form of the term datum."
Although I certainly will not argue with those who have mastered the English language (or Latin, for that matter), I would like to go on record as stating that as language evolves over time, so should those that profess to use it. So, on the note of evolution, the very meaning of the term "data" has in fact evolved. Yes, the various ways of storing and accessing data have changed. More important, there are many newer ways of identifying and classifying data. The .NET platform fully supports these changes.
The topics I cover in this chapter embrace that fact. I start the discussion with the most basic type of data access: the text file. Then, I move on to cover data repositories, a more complex view of data. I could easily stop there. But, I will not. Relentlessly, I will push forward. To finish off the chapter, I discuss a very different type of data: metadata.