ADO.NET Is the Future

ADO.NET Is the Future

The future of data binding and data access is with ADO.NET, not with DAO, RDO, or ADO. In Visual Basic .NET Windows Forms and Web Forms, ADO.NET offers a rich editing experience, with designers for connections, schemas, and data binding. Unfortunately, the ADO editing experience is not as rich as that of either ADO.NET in Visual Basic .NET or ADO in Visual Basic 6. Although ADO data binding is useful for maintaining existing applications, we advise you to use ADO.NET for new applications that use data access, especially those that use data binding.

If ADO.NET is the future, you may ask, why doesn t the Upgrade Wizard upgrade DAO, RDO, and ADO to ADO.NET? Unfortunately, there is no one-to-one mapping to ADO.NET. ADO.NET is a disconnected architecture, and it is distinct enough that automatic upgrading to it is not possible. For example, the Recordset object in ADO has the concept of a current row; this is a cursor that points to the current row as you step through a Recordset using the MoveFirst, MoveNext, MoveLast, and MovePrevious methods. The closest equivalent to a Recordset in ADO.NET is a DataTable (or DataSet, a collection of DataTables). A DataTable does not have a current row, and there is no equivalent to the Move method of a Recordset. For this reason, an automatic upgrade from DAO, RDO, and ADO is not possible. For an introduction to working with ADO.NET, see Chapter 20.