Summary

This chapter introduced you to some of the more commonly used managed data providers and how to communicate with the databases. Rather than show you a mountain of code specific to each type of database, the chapter showed you how similar the code is regardless of which database or provider you are accessing. Finally, you saw the power of dynamically connecting a DataSet to a DataAdapter to allow for the automatic propagation of changes made in the DataSet to the database. Having read this chapter, you should be more familiar with ADO.NET in general, as well as the means by which .NET applications access data and how you can use the DataSet as an incredibly powerful intermediary between your user interface (whether it is Windows or Web) and the underlying data source.