Sams Teach Yourself ADO.NET in 24 Hours

Hour 5. Connecting to a Data Source

In Hour 2, you saw how to work with DataSets by creating a few DataTables and manually adding columns and rows. This is a terrific way to learn how DataSets work. However, most often data is retrieved from a database and used to populate a DataSet, automatically creating a copy of the database schema and adding the requested data.

However, before you can retrieve anything from your database using ADO.NET, you must create and open a connection to the database using the Connection object. The Connection object uses a database connection string to locate and connect a data source. The exposed properties and methods of the Connection object have changed very little since the days of ADO 2.6.

This hour discusses ...