Essential ADO.NET

Discover what makes ADO.NET uniquely powerful -- and how you can use it to solve Web development problems that couldn't easily be solved with previous data access technologies. Beauchemin begins by outlining the tasks a contemporary data access API must address, explaining the ADO.NET capabilities that are truly novel, and describing the data storage styles and application types ADO.NET is best suited for. Next, using simple examples, he introduces each key component of ADO.NET: its data providers, DataSet object model, and XML data access model. Beauchemin explains how ADO.NET varies from the provider model common to traditional data access technologies, and introduces new features such as connection pooling and automatic distributed transactions. He presents in-depth coverage of ADO.NET DataAdapters, and offers detailed guidance on when to use a direct-from-the-database stream (the ADO.NET Data Reader) and when to use an offline cache. The book contains extensive coverage of data binding, XML and data access integration, XML data providers, data consumers moving from other data access APIs, and finally, the future of data access. For everyone building database applications with Microsoft technologies -- including more than two million Visual Basic developers who rely on ADO and need to understand the technology that is supplanting it. Foreword by Tim Ewald.