DB2 Version 10.1 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows

ADO.NET application development

In recent years, Microsoft has been promoting a new software development platform for Windows, known as the .NET Framework. The .NET Framework is Microsoft's replacement for Component Object Model (COM) technology. The following points highlight the key .NET Framework features: Through these features, the .NET Framework facilitates a wide variety of application implementations (for example, Windows forms, web forms, and web services), rapid application development, and secure application deployment. COM and COM+ proved to be inadequate or cumbersome for all the aforementioned features.

The .NET Framework provides extensive data access support through ADO.NET. ADO.NET supports both connected and disconnected access. The key component of disconnected data access in ADO.NET is the DataSet class, instances of which act as a database cache that resides in your application's memory.

For both connected and disconnected access, your applications use databases through what's known as a data provider. Various database products include their own .NET data providers for, including DB2® for Windows.

A .NET data provider features implementations of the following basic classes:

Microsoft provides two data providers, the OLE DB .NET Data Provider and ODBC .NET Data Provider. The OLE DB .NET Data Provider is a bridge provider that feeds ADO.NET requests to the IBM® OLE DB Provider (by way of the COM interop module). ODBC .NET Data Provider is a bridge provider that feeds ADO.NET requests to the IBM ODBC Driver. These .NET data provider are not recommended for access to DB2 family databases. The IBM Data Server Provider for .NET is a high performance, managed ADO.NET data provider. This is the recommended .NET data provider for use with DB2 family databases. ADO.NET database access using the IBM Data Server Provider for .NET has fewer restrictions, and provides significantly better performance than the OLE DB and ODBC .NET bridge providers.