What is ADO.NET ?

Hi,

I am new in .Net,
anyone can please give me some information about the ADO.NET.

ADO.NET is the evolution of ADO, but is not similar to ADO in many ways. ADO was designed on the basis that the client could maintain a connection to the database and request data over this connection, or update the database through the same connection. The client application was connected to the database at all times, and it could access any table at any time. This is how the database applications that run on the local area networks are written.

As programmers needed to write applications which could access databases over the web, they found that it was difficult to establish multiple connections to the database simultaneously. Clearly, there was a need for a new technology, one that would completely decouple the server from the client. This new technology is implemented with ADO.NET, which uses a disconnected architecture. ADO.NET doesn’t allow us to maintain a connection to the database and access it directly. However, we can retrieve the data to the client and work with them there.

ADO.NET provides consistent access to data sources such as Microsoft SQL Server, as well as data sources exposed through OLE DB and XML. Data-sharing consumer applications can use ADO.NET to connect to these data sources and retrieve, manipulate, and update data.

ADO.NET cleanly factors data access from data manipulation into discrete components that can be used separately or in tandem. ADO.NET includes .NET Framework data providers for connecting to a database, executing commands, and retrieving results. Those results are either processed directly, or placed in an ADO.NET DataSet object in order to be exposed to the user in an ad-hoc manner, combined with data from multiple sources, or remoted between tiers. The ADO.NET DataSet object can also be used independently of a .NET Framework data provider to manage data local to the application or sourced from XML.

The ADO.NET classes are found in System.Data.dll, and are integrated with the XML classes found in System.Xml.dll. When compiling code that uses the System.Data namespace, reference both System.Data.dll and System.Xml.dll. For an example of compiling an ADO.NET application using a command line compiler, see ADO.NET Sample Application.

ADO.NET provides functionality to developers writing managed code similar to the functionality provided to native COM developers by ADO.

• ADO.NET is a part of the .NET Framework
  
  
• ADO.NET consists of a set of classes used to handle data access
  
  
• ADO.NET is entirely based on XML
  
  
• ADO.NET has, unlike ADO, no Recordset object