“The purpose of this paper is to provide a concentrated, yet pragmatic, overview of ADO.NET by highlighting the performance and usability benefits of using ADO.NET with Microsoft SQL Server 2000. The intended audience is architects and developers who are familiar with ADO and are interested in learning about data access in the Microsoft .NET Framework.” Read the article at MSDN. “When developing the design-time architecture for the .NET Framework, Microsoft chose to use source code as the persistence mechanism for user code rather than a binary or other private solution. Code persistence allows users to learn from the code that the Designer outputs as well as be able to easily build projects outside of the Visual Studio .NET environment if desired. It also allows understandable and accessible customization for advanced scenarios and components.” Read the article at MSDN.
Here is what I experienced when I wanted to check out .NET: I just wanted to take a look at the terrarium tech demo. But of course you have to have a microsoft passport to do this. When I wanted to register a passport account, they told me that my browser (Konqueror) was not supported. I tried with mozilla 0.98, but it did not work either. So just to take a look at some microsoft code samples, you have to use a microsoft browser on a microsoft operating system.
I suspect that it will be the same with everything:
You want to use ADO.NET? You have to use Microsoft SQL Server. Oracle will probably work with a huge amount of tweaking, postgres or mysql will not work at all. But it will be such a hassle that nobody will bother to use anything other than MS SQL Server.
You want to use ASP.net? You have to use IIS on WinXP. Maybe in two years there will be an apache module that sometimes works, but nobody will bother.
I really like the .NET technology. But the microsoft strategy with .NET is to take over the internet and define all protocols. You think that TCP/IP is here to stay? Wait until Microsoft adds some patent-riddled proprietary extensions. In a few years, you will no longer be able to get a webmail account or read the major news sites without using Internet Explorer .NET. Of course there will be a hacker underground that still uses open standards, but these will probably be outlawed under the SSSCA or whatever it is called then.
Hail to the brave new microsoft world ™
did you know that water is wet, sky is blue and day is not night??