Microsoft has done an excellent job in building a next generation development environment. It is significantly easier to build web and client/server applications, to access and update information in databases, to move information to/from XML and to build web services. Unfortunately, Microsoft has done a poor job of marketing the .Net development environment. Many IT managers are confused by the alphabet soup of .Net tools—ADO.Net, ASP.Net, VB.Net, C#, CLR. They don’t know why they might want to upgrade to .Net.

In this series of articles, we will build on our experience using .Net tools to describe the business benefits that will accrue to companies that switch from a traditional Visual Basic 6 development environment to a .Net development environment. In this article, we will focus on data access with ADO.Net.

ADO.Net is a set of data access methods that developers can use to extract data from a data source (e.g., a SQL Server database), manipulate the data, and update the database. It can be used in both web and client/server applications developed using either of the .Net programming languages (VB.Net or C#).

There are three principal business benefits of ADO.Net. First, new methods will make your developers more productive. The DataReader method is designed to make it easy to extract data from a database to be displayed in a report or table on a web page or in an application. The DataSet method allows the developer to download a mini-database to the client and then display or manipulate the data in any way that is needed. When they are done, the mini-database can be uploaded and integrated into the database.

Second, ADO.Net makes extensive use of XML. The DataSet that comes back is represented as XML. This makes it easy to move data to or from other applications. XML is fast becoming the lingua franca for structuring data to be moved between organizations. Many of our clients are receiving data from third parties in XML format. This data can then be easily uploaded into their databases using ADO.Net.

Finally, ADO.Net is a disconnected model for data access. There does not have to be an open connection between the client application and the database while the data is being manipulated and changed. The connection is only open when data are loaded into the client and when the changes made by the user are updated back into the database. This makes it easier to scale applications without upgrading servers to handle more database connections. It also makes it easier for developers to manage opening and closing database connections in their application code.

The bottom line is that ADO.Net is a significant improvement over previous data access methods. Its benefits are greatest for web-based applications and ones that work with XML. Once they get past the learning curve, your developers will be more productive if you make the switch.