ADO.NET Update Strategies

Up to this point I’ve written a lot about extracting and massaging data from your data sources, but hardly a word about saving changes to the database or simply transporting the resultset data to some other tier. I expect that most of you work with applications where you need to change the data from time to time. This chapter focuses on the mechanics of persisting your changes to a data source or transporting your in-memory DataTable or DataRow data. Remember that ADO.NET is basically an “in-memory” data manager so “updating” might be as simple as changing the Value property in a DataRow; deleting a row could be implemented by using the RemoveAt method against the Rows collection. Updating might also be as complex as calling a series of conditional SQL queries that update a related set of tables applying complex business rules and triggers under a strict permissions regimen with convoluted referential integrity constraints.