Visual.Net 2005 Database Connection

Data Access in .Net using ADO.Net

If you are new to VB.Net School

This is the 13th in the series of lessons in the VB.NET School. The VB.NET School is a kind of interactive learning platform where those who want to learn .NET with VB.NET can find help and support. With one issue a week, describing some areas of the VB.NET Programming Language with the Microsoft .NET Platform, this is not the same traditional passive tutorial where the author only writes and the reader only reads. There will be exercise problems at the end of each issue, which the reader is expected to solve after reading the issue. The solution to these problems will be provided in the next issue for testing purposes. There is also a dedicated message board attached with the school, where you can ask questions about the article, and the author will respond to your question within 2/3 days. You can send your suggestions, feedback or ideas on how these lessons can be improved to either the Author (farazrasheed@acm.org) or the WEBMASTER (info@programmersheaven.com).

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Lesson Plan

In this lesson we will learn how VB.NET applications can interact with database systems. We will start out by looking at the architecture of ADO.NET and its different components. Later we will demonstrate data access in .NET through an application. Finally we will learn about stored procedures and explore the Data Grid control which is commonly used for viewing data.

Introducing ADO.NET

Most of today's applications need to interact with database systems to persist, edit or view data. In .NET, data access services are provided through ADO.NET components. ADO.NET is an object oriented framework that allows you to interact with database systems. We usually interact with database systems through SQL queries or stored procedures. The best thing about ADO.NET is that it is extremely flexible and efficient. ADO.NET also introduces the concept of disconnected data architecture. In traditional data access components, you made a connection to the database system and then interacted with it through SQL queries using the connection. The application stays connected to the DB system even when it is not using DB services. This commonly wastes valuable and expensive database resources, as most of the time applications only query and view the persistent data. ADO.NET solves this problem by managing a local buffer of persistent data called a data set. Your application automatically connects to the database server when it needs to run a query and then disconnects immediately after getting the result back and storing it in the dataset. This design of ADO.NET is called disconnected data architecture and is very much similar to the connectionless services of