Chapter 5. Databases
Many applications rely on database
management systems, such as SQL Server or Oracle, to provide robust,
high-performance storage and retrieval of information. Visual Studio
.NET provides tools that enable you to design, maintain, and use
databases and that help you manage changes as your application
evolves.
Visual tools help you design database objects such as tables,
queries, and relationships. Visual Studio .NET is able to observe the
changes you make with these tools and save them in a Database
project. This allows any changes you make to a development server to
be applied at a later date to other servers (e.g., staging servers
and production servers). Code generation facilities are also
available in certain project types that automate the retrieval and
storage of data. For example, .NET projects allow
data adapters
and type-safe datasets to be created from
database schemas. You can also use all of the visual database tools
without needing a project at all—they can all be accessed
through the Server Explorer.
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The various editions of Visual Studio .NET offer different levels of
support for database work.
Section 5.4
shows what level of support each of the editions offers for the various database
types.
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Table 5-1. Database support in Visual Studio .NET editions
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Browse MSDE or Access
|
X
|
X
|
X
|
|
Browse any OLE DB data source
|
X
|
X
|
|
|
Design MSDE databases
|
X
|
X
|
|
|
Design any OLE DB data source
|
X
|
|
|
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