Editing ADO.NET (section)

== Architecture ==
[[Image:DotNet3.0.svg|thumb|right|240px|This [[technology]] forms a part of [[.NET Framework 3.0]] (having been part of the framework since version 1.0)]]

ADO.NET is conceptually divided into consumers and data providers.<ref name="ADO_arch">{{cite web|title=ADO.NET Architecture|url=https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/data/adonet/ado-net-architecture|website=docs.microsoft.com|publisher=Microsoft|access-date=4 September 2017|language=en-us}}</ref> The consumers are the applications that need access to the data, and the providers are the software components that implement the interface and thereby provide the data to the consumer.

Functionality exists in [[Microsoft Visual Studio|Visual Studio]] IDE to create specialized subclasses of the DataSet classes for a particular [[database schema]], allowing convenient access to each field in the schema through strongly typed [[Property (programming)|properties]]. This helps catch more programming errors at compile-time and enhances the IDE's [[Intellisense]] feature.

A ''provider'' is a software component that interacts with a [[database|data source]]. ADO.NET data providers are analogous to [[ODBC driver]]s, [[JDBC driver]]s, and [[OLE DB provider]]s.

ADO.NET providers can be created to access such simple data stores as a text file and spreadsheet, through to such complex databases as [[Oracle Database]], [[Microsoft SQL Server]], [[MySQL]], [[PostgreSQL]], [[SQLite]], [[IBM Db2]], [[Adaptive Server Enterprise|Sybase ASE]], and many others. They can also provide access to hierarchical data stores such as email systems.

Because different data store technologies can have different capabilities, every ADO.NET provider cannot implement every possible interface available in the ADO.NET standard. Microsoft describes the availability of an interface as "provider-specific," as it may not be applicable depending on the data store technology involved. Providers may augment the capabilities of a data store; these capabilities are known as "services" in Microsoft parlance.