Bill Hamilton & Matthew MacDonald 
ADO.NET in a Nutshell [PDF ebook] 

Written by experts on the Microsoft .NET programming platform, ADO.NET in a Nutshell delivers everything .NET programmers will need to get a jump-start on ADO.NET technology or to sharpen their skills even further. In the tradition of O’Reilly’s In a Nutshell Series, ADO.NET in a Nutshell is the most complete and concise source of ADO.NET information available.ADO.NET is the suite of data access technologies in the .NET Framework that developers use to build applications services accessing relational data and XML. Connecting to databases is a fundamental part of most applications, whether they are web, Windows, distributed, client/server, XML Web Services, or something entirely different. But ADO.NET is substantially different from Microsoft’s previous data access technologies–including the previous version of ADO–so even experienced developers need to understand the basics of the new disconnected model before they start programming with it.Current with the .NET Framework 1.1, ADO.NET in a Nutshell offers one place to look when you need help with anything related to this essential technology, including a reference to the ADO.NET namespaces and object model. In addition to being a valuable reference, this book provides a concise foundation for programming with ADO.NET and covers a variety of issues that programmers face when developing web applications or Web Services that rely on database access. Using C#, this book presents real world, practical examples that will help you put ADO.NET to work immediately.Topics covered in the book include:An Introduction to ADO.NETConnections, Commands and Data Readers Disconnected Data Advanced Data Sets Transactions Data Views and Data Binding XML and the Data Set Included with the book is a Visual Studio .NET add-in that integrates the entire reference directly into your help files. When combining ADO.NET in a Nutshell with other books from O’Reilly’s .NET In a Nutshell series, you’ll have a comprehensive, detailed and independent reference collection that will help you become more productive.