Flash Remoting: The Definitive Guide

Database Access with ADO.NET

ADO.NET is the .NET Framework’s class library for reading and manipulating data sources. This section identifies the major classes used when selecting and inserting data into an Access database, as well as reading XML with ASP.NET.

Tip

These examples connect with an Access database using the OLEDB ADO.NET library. Implementation for SQL databases and other data sources differs slightly.

In many ways, ADO.NET has surpassed its predecessor ADO. The new version of the database connectivity library provides tighter integration with Microsoft databases, increasing the speed of calls to a Microsoft SQL database. The library also allows binding to Microsoft’s server controls, making it easy to build HTML tables and grids of database information. One of the most notable features is a new DataSet object that provides disconnected access to data sources. This allows developers to reduce the load on the SQL back end while maintaining access to data.

ADO.NET with Flash Remoting also allows binding to Flash objects. This feature works similar to binding data to a DataGrid or other ASP.NET server control and provides Flash with a RecordSet object containing ADO.NET’s results. We’ll describe this feature in more detail later in this section.

Note

The following sample uses the Northwind.mdb file, a sample database bundled with Microsoft Access. The database can usually be found in the directory C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\Samples\.

Once you’ve found the file, ...