Wrox - Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Databases

Introduction

Who This Book Is For
This book is aimed at intermediate or experienced programmers who have started on their journey toward ASP.NET development and who are already familiar with relational databases such as SQL Server. While readers won’t be introduced to many new ASP.NET 2.0 concepts in Chapter 1, this book is not intended to be a first port of call for the developer looking at ASP.NET, since there are already many books and articles covering this area. Instead, this book cuts straight to the heart of accessing data from within ASP.NET web applications. To get the most out of the book, you should have some basic knowledge of C#. All the code examples will be explained in C#.

In a similar vein, there are many books and articles that cover in depth the data access technologies that you will need to use this book. General knowledge of ADO.NET and XML, and a basic understanding of relational databases are assumed.

What This Book Covers

This book explores the array of ADO.NET 2.0 features and how they can be used in ASP.NET for developing web applications. Data access is a key component of .NET Framework and is present everywhere in the .NET Framework, from data source controls to data bound controls that consume data all the way from objects to relational data stores. In the first part of this book, you’ll find in-depth coverage of the data source controls that enable data binding in the ASP.NET platform. Data source controls, data bound controls, and caching support built in to the data source controls are discussed with ASP.NET samples and reference information. Next, the book moves on to advanced features such as site navigation, implementing sorting and paging, and displaying and editing data in templates.

The final part of this book focuses on transactions in ADO.NET 2.0, advanced ADO.NET features for data display, and SQL Server 2005 XML features. You’ll also find a couple of case studies on the use of data source and data bound controls in ASP.NET and XML features that provide you with a real-life example on how to leverage these features.