A Programmer’s Guide to ADO.NET in C#

Book excerpt: A Programmer's Guide to ADO.NET in C# begins by taking readers through a fast-paced overview of C# and then delves into ADO.NET. Why should C# programmers use it instead of the existing technologies? What new functionality does it offer? The chapters that follow go through the details on each of the major Data Providers of the .NET platform (OleDb, SQL Server, and ODBC) that enable you to read and write data to the targeted database. These chapters also serve as a good reference for looking up detailed methods and properties for these data provider classes. Authors Chand and Gold also show C# programmers how to work with XML classes and how to integrate XML into the ADO.NET architecture. The book provides programmers with handy ideas about taking advantage of the VS.NET IDE and how you can tie your data to the myriad of powerful controls including the multi-faceted Data Grid. Finally, it goes through creating a guest book application for the Web so you can see how all the pieces fit together.