ADONET

ADO.NET is part of the base class library for Microsoft’s .NET Framework, and is used for access to data in DBMS’s (mainly relational sources, but also non-relational). ADO.NET is an evolution out of ActiveX Data Objects technology, but was altered substantially for operation within the context of .NET Framework.

ADO.NET has two basic elements: DataProvider (classes that offer access to a data source like MS SQL Server), and DataSets (classes that describe a containment hierarchy for a relational database). A DataSet is fed out of a database by a DataAdapter with set command and connection attributes. DataSets save content in XML and can read from XML, which makes ADO.NET highly functional in Web Services and distributed applications.

Visual Studio .NET is an IDE that creates special-use subclasses of DataSet classes. This allows strongly-typed properties for each field being accessed, resulting in more efficient validation and error recovery procedures.