Chapter 18: ADO.NET

• What’s New in ADO.NET
• Creating and Using Datasets
• Establishing a Connection to a Data Store
• Executing a Command
• Using a DataReader Object to Retrieve Data
• Using a DataAdapter Object to Populate a Dataset

Most of the applications you create access or save data. Typically, this data is stored in a database or in some other type of storage mechanism, such as an XML file. Before the .NET initiative, you would use Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) as a means of accessing and storing data. ADO.NET is the next step in this evolution of data access technology, integrating the data access capabilities of ADO with the Microsoft .NET Framework. As you’ll see in this chapter, ADO.NET encompasses a number of changes to the data access technology and provides you with many more capabilities.