ADO.NET 3.5 Cookbook, 2nd Edition

Chapter 1. Connecting to Data

1.0. Introduction

This chapter shows how to connect to a variety of data sources from ADO.NET; how to handle security-related issues including storing connection strings and using different authentication methods; and how to set up, monitor, and optimize connection pooling.

ADO.NET Overview

ADO.NET is the part of the .NET Framework that connects applications to data sources and lets you retrieve and update the contained data. ADO.NET supports a variety of different data sources, including relational databases such as Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, and Microsoft Access, as well as other data sources such as Microsoft Excel, Outlook, and text files.

A .NET Framework data provider is used to connect to a data source, execute commands, and retrieve results. The .NET Framework ships with the data providers shown in Table 1-1.

Table 1-1. Data providers included in the .NET Framework

.NET Framework data provider	Data source access
SQL Server	Microsoft SQL Server version 7.0 or later
OLE DB	Data sources using OLE DB
ODBC	Data sources using ODBC
Oracle	Oracle client software version 8.1.7 or later

Other providers are also available; for example, Oracle has developed its own .NET data provider. Data providers also exist for databases such as Sybase and MySQL. Database-specific providers usually access the underlying data store directly and offer the best performance, broadest functionality, and support for database-specific features. Since a data provider needs only to implement ...