How to access, insert, update and

delete data in a sql server 2005

database using ADO.Net
technolgy, in a .Net application
ADO.Net is the technology used by .Net applications for accessing and updating data. ADO.Net is
available to the programmer as classes. These classes provide all the members we need, to access
and manipulate the SQL Serverdatabase.
ADO.Net is comprehensive and exposes a large number of members to perform various operations.
Common operations are inserting, modifying and deleting data.
We all know that business applications need to manage voluminous data and this data is generally
stored in a relational database like SQL Server in the form of tables.
Applications communicate with a database for the following tasks.
-Retrieving the data stored in the SQL Server database and presenting it in a user-friendly format to
the user.
-Updating the database, that is, inserting, modifying, and deleting data.
The ADO.Net class consists objects represented by the object model.
The important objects are :

Object
Connection
Object
Command
Object

Description
Creates a connection to your data source

Provides access to commands to execute

against your data source.
Provides an in-memory representation of your
Dataset Object
data sources
Data Reader Provides a read-only, forward-only stream
Object
containing your data
Data Adapter Serves as a media between the DataSet and
Object
datasource, provides the mapping instructions

between two.

Fig:1.1 - Relationship between Visual Basic.Net application, ADO.Net data access components and
SQL Server

.Net data Providers

The following are the four components and are together referred to as the Data Providers, as shown
in the above figure.

Connection

Command

DataReader

DataAdapter

Let us try and understand how the ADO.Net Objects fits into the scheme of programming in Visual
Basic .Net.
Firstly, observe that the object model is sought to be explained in relationship to the database and
the Visual Basic.net application. Hence, the shading of the Visual Basic.net and database blocks.
We also note that the four components are shown grouped as Data Provider. The dataset is not
categorized as data provider as the dataset is a temporary storage mechanism or representation of

the data source in the memory.

ADO.Net Data Providers

The Data Provider itself can be of two types. One OLEDB, another SQL Server. The first Data
Provider, SQL Server .NET Data Provider uses a special protocol called TDS (Tabular Data Stream)
to communicate directly with SQL Server without adding the overhead of OLE DB or ODBC. This
Data Provider is represented in the .NET namespace as System.Data.SqlClient.
The other Data Provider is the OLE DB .NET Provider. Using .NET's COM interoperability features,
OLEDB .Net provides native OLE DB to enable data access. This Data Provider provides access to
almost all database servers like Oracle and MySql.
As shown in the diagram, the Data Provider speaks to the database. The DataSet speaks to the
Data Provider and represents disconnected data that caches data locally on the client. In cases
where forward-cursor read-only access is required, the DataReader part of the Data Provider can be
used.
Let us see how each component of the Data Provider is used in the Accounting Application.

Connection object
The Connection object establishes a connection to the database. Two of the most common
Connection objects used are OleDbConnection and SqlConnection. Both the SqlConnection and
OleDbConnection namespaces inherit from the IdbConnection object. The important property of the
Connection object is ConnectionString and State property and the important method is Open()
method.

ConnectionString Property
It provides information, such as the data source and database name, that is used to establish
connection with a database.
Here is an example of the ConnectionString property.
Dim conFinAccounting As New SqlConnection
conFinAccounting.ConnectionString="Data Source=(local); Initial Catalog=FinAccounting; Integrated

Security=SSPI;"
Replace the data source value with the name of your SQL Server, or keep the local setting if you are
running SQL Server on the same machine. Set the value for Integrated Security as SSPI which
specifies the secure connection.

The Open() method of the Connection object

After we set the ConnectionString property of the Connection object, we must call the Open()
method to establish a connection to the SQL Server database as shown below.
conFinAccounting.Open()

The Command object

The Command object is used to execute SQL statements to access data. The Command object can
be derived from SqlCommand or OLEDbCommand class. Before a Command object can be used, a
connection object has to be created. The OLEDbCommand class is part of the System.Data.OleDb
namespace and the SqlCommand class is part of the System.Data.SqlClient namespace. The
SqlCommand should be used with SQL Server and the OLEDbCommand with any other OLEDB
data source.
The following code demonstrates how to instantiate the SqlCommand object.
Dim conFinAccounting As SqlConnection
Dim comAccounts As SqlCommand
Dim strSQL As String
'Instantiate the connection
conFinAccounting=New SqlConnection()
conFinAccounting.ConnectionString="Data Source=(local); Initial Catalog=FinAccounting; Integrated
Security=SSPI;"
'Open the Connection
conFinAccounting.Open()
'Build Query String
strSQL="SELECT * FROM Accounts"

'Instantiate the command

comAccounts=New SqlCommand(strSQL,conFinAccounting)
Now, we know how to set up and instantiate a command object in an Accounting Application. Next,
we will execute the various methods of the command class, the ExecuteNonQuery, ExecuteReader,
ExecuteScalar and ExecuteXmlReader.

ExecuteNonQuery
We will use this method when we want to execute a non-row returning command such as a DELETE
Statement as shown.
comAccounts.ExecuteNonQuery

ExecuteReader
This method should be used when we want to execute a row-returning command, such as a
SELECT Statement as shown.
comAccounts.ExecuteNonQuery

ExecuteScalar
We should use this method when we want the first column of the first row of the result set returned
as shown.
'Save the number of rows in the table.
intNumRows=Cint(comAccounts.ExecuteScalar().ToString)

ExecuteXmlReader
This method is similar to the ExecuteReader method, but the returned rows must be expressed using
XML as shown.
Dim drdTest As XmlReader

drdTest=comAccounts.ExecuteXmlReader()

The DataReader object

DataReader is used to retrieve data from a datasource in a read-only and forward-only mode. A
DataReader uses the Connection object to connect to the database, the Command object to execute
SQL statements or procedures on the database and retrieves the data in a sequential mode. Using
data reader results in faster access to data and less memory usage since at any time, only a single
row is stored in the memory.
The commonly used properties and methods of a DataReader object are :
- FieldCount property
- Item Property
- IsClosed property
- Read method
- Close method
How to access SQL Server database using DataReader

The DataAdapter object

Data is transferred to and from a database through a DataAdapter. When we make changes to the
dataset, the changes in the database are actually done by the DataAdapter. The DataAdapter is the
connector class that sits between the disconnected and the connected parts of ADO.NET. The
DataAdapter connects to a datasource using a Connection object and then it uses Command objects
to retrieve data from the data source and to send data back to the datasource. A DataAdapter
handles data transfer between the database and the DataSet through its properties and methods.
There are two types of DataAdapters that can be configured to connect to a database in
VisualStudio.Net.
SqlDataAdapter : This type of DataAdapter is configured to access data from Microsoft SQL Server.
OleDbDataAdapter : This type of DataAdapter is configured to access data from any database that is
supported by an OLE DB data provider.

DataAdapter properties and methods

The following properties and methods of a DataAdapter can be set to perform various operations on
a database.
SelectCommand - Refers to a SQL statement or a stored procedure to retrieve data from the
database
InsertCommand - Refers to a data command to update a database
DeleteCommand - Refers to a data command to delete data from the database

Fill() method - Fills the dataset with the records from a database
Update() method - Executes the corresponding InsertCommand, UpdateCommand, or
DeleteCommand for each inserted, modified, or deleted row to reflect the changes in the database.

The DataSet object

DataSet is a disconnected, cached set of records that are retrieved from the database. When a
connection is established with the database, the DataAdapter creates a DataSet and stores data in
it. After the data is retrieved and stored in a DataSet, the connection with the database is closed. The
DataSet acts like a virtual database containing tables, rows and columns. The DataReader is not
sufficient for your data manipulation needs.
If you ever need to update your data, or store relational or hierarchical data, look no further than the
DataSet object. Because the DataReader navigation mechanism is linear, you have no way of
traversing between relational or hierarchical data structures. The DataSet provides a liberated way of
navigating through both relational and hierarchical data.
One of the strenths of a DataSet is the fact that is completely independent of the data source. The
fact that a DataSet is disconnected and thereby independent of the data source makes it ideal for
containing data from multiple data sources, such as tables from various databases.

Types of DataSets : Typed vs. Untyped Data Sets

A dataset can be typed or untyped. The difference is that the typed dataset has a schema and the
untyped dataset does not. You can choose to use either type of dataset in your application, but you
need to know that there is more support for the typed data sets in Visual Studio.
A typed dataset gives you easier access to the content of table fields through strongly typed

programming. Strongly typed programming uses information from the underlying data scheme. This
means you are programming directly against your declared objects and not the tables you are really
trying to manipulate. A typed dataset has a reference to an XML schema file. This schema file (*.xsd)
describes the structure of all the tables contained within the dataset.

Creating Typed DataSets

We have to create the typed data set manually or at least with the help of some tools. We cannot
create a typed dataset from code.
There are a number of steps required in order to generate a typed data set:
Get or create the schema. Generate the dataset class Create an instance of the newly generated
and derived dataset class
From these steps, we can conclude that a typed dataset is a class that wraps the data access and
provides with strong typing.
There are two tools to create a typed dataset:
Component Designer
DataSet Designer

DataSet properties
The DataSet class properties
DefaultViewManager
Returns a view of the data in the DataSet. This view can be filtered or sorted, and we can search and
navigate through it. The returned value is of data type DataViewManager.
HasErrors
Returns a Boolean value indicating if there are any errors in the rows in the dataset tables. You can
use this property before checking any of the individual tables that also have a HasErrors property.
Tables

Returns the collection of tables from the DataSet. The returned value is of data type
DataTableCollection, and it holds objects of data type DataTable. Nothing is returned if no data
tables exist.

DataSet class methods

AcceptChanges()
This method accepts or commits all the changes that have been made to the dataset since the last
time the method was called or since the dataset was loaded.
GetChanges()
This overloaded method is used for retrieving a copy of the dataset that contains all the changes that
have been made since the last time the AcceptCahnges method was called or since the dataset was
loaded.
HasChanges()
This method can be used to detect if there are any changes to the data in the DataSet. The method
is overloaded, and one version takes a member of teh DataRowState enum as an argument. This
way you can specify whether you only want to detect a specific change, such as added rows. A
Boolean value indicating if there are any changes is returned.
Ex: blnChanges=dstAccounts.HasChanges(DataRowState.Added)
Displaying data in a DataGrid using Dataset and DataAdapter
Summary:
The ADO.Net technology is an advanced data access technology and is a must for all those who
wish to master database programming using Microsoft Technologies.
you can also Insert, Update or Delete Data in SQL Server from an Excel Spreadsheet.