Afew years ago, Microsoft released the 1.0 Framework of ADO.NET and revolutionized the way we access data. It was a drastic change that took some getting used to, but for the most part, developers who made the switch love it. It’s now over three years later, and ADO.NET 2.0 is here. It provides all the same features that we’ve come to love in ADO.NET 1.0 and adds some new ones to provide even more functionality and make repetitive, mundane tasks much simpler. Throughout this book, we dig deeply into many of these new features.
As you start reading, you’ll notice that several chapters go beyond ADO.NET, focusing more on Microsoft SQL Server 2005. This is because the two are very tightly related. Many of the new features in ADO.NET 2.0 are designed to be used with Microsoft SQL Server 2005, and many of the new features found in SQL 2005 require ADO.NET 2.0 to get the most benefit from them. It wouldn’t be practical to speak strictly about ADO.NET without providing some basic working knowledge about what’s new in SQL 2005. Most people will likely move to both technologies around the same time, so this additional information should be very beneficial.