Beginning Web Development, Silverlight, and ASP.NET AJAX

CHAPTER 4 ■ DATA BINDING WITH ASP.NET 71
(Connection, Command, etc.) that are written specifically for this database. In addition to
this, there is also an Object Linking and Embedding for Databases (OLEDB) provider and
an Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) provider, which are written to access any database
that provides OLEDB or ODBC databases, respectively. Although these aren’t
optimized for a database such as SQL Server, they will still work. For older versions of
SQL Server that do not support the ADO.NET provider (earlier than 7.0), they provide a
viable option.
The built-in set of providers is rounded out with an Oracle provider, which is optimized
for Oracle databases.
The recommendation if you are using Oracle or SQL Server is to use their dedicated
providers, due to the optimization inherent in them. Should this not work, OLEDB is recommended,
and then the ODBC provider as a final fallback option.
You are, of course, not limited to these providers, and a third-party ecosystem of
providers around databases such as MySQL and PostGreSQL has evolved. Take note that
these providers form dependencies that you’ll need to account for when you deploy your
application.
Despite the fact that you use different providers for different databases or versions of
databases, the API has been carefully designed to avoid fragmentation. Each provider is
built upon a standard set of interfaces that ensure that the method signatures for standard
operations such as open and close are preserved. Because of this, your application
data access code is buffered from change if you switch databases.
We’ll go into ADO.NET programming a little later in this chapter, but first, it’s a good
idea to get a copy of SQL Server. If you don’t have one already, the Express edition can be
downloaded from MSDN at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/sql. We’ll explore
this in the next few sections before delving back into ADO.NET development to round
out the chapter. Note that if you are using Windows Vista, you should find Service Pack 2
(SP2) for SQL Server Express and then download and install that. SP2 is available from
the Visual Studio Express download site at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/
sql/register/default.aspx.
SQL Server 2005 Express
If you’ve developed Windows applications before, you may have encountered a “mini”
desktop database called Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine 2000 (MSDE). SQL Server
2005 Express edition is the next version of this and is free to download, redistribute, and
embed in your applications. It’s a great way to get familiar with SQL Server because it can
be used with tools such as SQL Server Management Studio, which may be downloaded
and installed from the same site as SQL Server Express. This tool is also used in the Enterprise
editions. In this section, you’ll look at downloading, installing, and configuring SQL
Server Express for your applications.