Introduction to ADO.NET
Definition: ADO is a rich set of classes, interfaces, structures, and enumerated types that
manage data access from various types of data stores.
Enterprise applications handle a large amount of data. This data is primarily stored in relational
databases, like Oracle, SQL Server, Access, and so on. These databases use Structured Query
Language (SQL) for retrieval of data.
To access enterprise data from a .NET application, an interface was needed. This interface acts
as a bridge between an RDBMS system and a .Net application. ADO.NET is such an interface that
is created to connect .NET applications to RDBMS systems.
In the .NET framework, Microsoft introduced a new version of Active X Data Objects (ADO)
called ADO.NET. Any .NET application, either Windows-based or web-based, can interact with
the database using a rich set of classes of the ADO.NET library. Data can be accessed from any
database using connected or disconnected architecture.
Features of ADO.NET :
The following are the features of ADO.NET –
Interoperability-
We know that XML documents are text-based formats. So, one can edit and edit XML
documents using standard text-editing tools. ADO.NET uses XML in all data exchanges and for
internal representation of data.
Maintainability –
ADO.NET is built around the idea of separation of data logic and user interface. It means that we
can create our application in independent layers.
Programmability (Typed Programming) –
It is a programming style in which user words are used to construct statements or evaluate
expressions. For example: If we want to select the “Marks” column from “Kawal” from the
“Student” table, the following is the way to do so:
DataSet.Student("Kawal").Marks;
Performance –
It uses disconnected data architecture which is easy to scale as it reduces the load on the
database. Everything is handled on the client-side, so it improves performance.
Scalability –
It means meeting the needs of the growing number of clients, which degrading performance. As
it uses disconnected data access, applications do not retain database lock connections for a
longer time. Thus, it accommodates scalability by encouraging programmers to conserve limited
resources and allow users to access data simultaneously.
