Programming Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012

.NET Data Access Evolution

ADO.NET was released with the very first version of the .NET Framework in early 2002, and it offers you two ways to access the database programmatically: using raw objects or DataSets (or combinations of the two). You can use the raw ADO.NET objects to interact directly with the database by explicitly connecting to it, executing direct T-SQL or stored procedures, and pulling data back with streaming readers. Alternatively, you can work at a higher level of abstraction with DataSets, using DataAdapters as wrappers around the raw objects to fill and update the DataSet. Because DataAdapters are merely wrappers around the very same raw objects, you can use a combination of raw objects and DataSets as desired. In our discussion, ...