My second session of Tech Ed is on the advances coming down the pipe for ADO.NET.  There’s some neat stuff coming!

Key themes — Data modeling at a conceptual level, better integration with .NET, better integratino with programming languages.

Client views

  • View the data how you want the app to see it.  This often involves denormalizing the data a bit.
  • Implemented on teh client (MapConnection, MapCommand, MapDataReader)
  • Can be designed so they are still updatable
  • Follows the same pattern as ADO.NET 2.0 — just another povider.
  • Behind the scenes turned back into schema of database.

Entity Data Model (EDM): Entity-relationship model, Explicit concdept of entity and relationships, they are “executable” (not jsut like an E-R diagram that you hang on the wall)

Entity SQL: Use in MapCommand objects. Data store independent. Very similar to T-SQL.

ADO.NET object layer

  • Object services lies on top of mapping provider, just a layer on top.
  • ObjectContext: Single entry point
  • Query using Entity SQL, Qury(Of DbTypeName) = dbObject.GetQuery(…)
    • Returned objects can be changed in memory, ObjectContext.SaveChanges
    • Fully integrated with System.Transactions

LINQ: Each data source will be LINQ-enabled (objects, datasets, SQLJ, entitys, XML).  LINQ capabilities in Datasets may prove to be particularly useful.