ADO.NET Cookbook

Chapter 2. Retrieving and Managing Data

Introduction

The DataSet is a disconnected, in-memory relational database that provides sophisticated navigational capabilities. It acts as a container for other objects including DataTable, DataColumn, DataRow, and DataRelation. The DataAdapter works with the DataSet to update the data source with changes made offline to the DataSet. You can also data bind a DataSet to a variety of Windows Forms and Web Forms controls, in particular, any control that supports the IList interface. The DataSet maintains both current and original versions of its data. Although data appears to be changed, it is not permanently changed until the AcceptChanges( ) method is called either explicitly or implicitly to commit the changes. Recipe 2.6 shows how to access rows marked for deletion.

The DataReader provides forward-only, read-only access to a result set. The DataReader offers the best performance for accessing data by avoiding the overhead associated with the DataSet. The Connection object underlying a DataReader remains open and cannot be used for any other purpose while data is being accessed. This makes the DataReader unsuitable for communicating data remotely between application tiers, or interacting with the data dynamically. If you want to discard a result set in a DataReader before the entire result set has been read, call the Cancel( ) method of the DataReader before calling the Close( ) method. This discards the results on the server so they are not ...