19.4. Data Provider Components

Each .NET data provider consists of the following main components:

• Connection - represents a unique session with the data source.

• Command - executes SQL statements and stored procedures against the data source.

• DataReader - a forward-only, read-only connected ResultSet

• DataAdapter - acts as a bridge between disconnected and connected classes and is used for filling a disconnected DataSet and updating the data source with changes made to a disconnected DataSet.

• DataSet - is an in memory representation of data and is capable of containing multiple tables and their relations.

The following diagram depicts the relationships between each of these components and how they work together in the ADO.NET object model.

For EDB Connector/.NET all the database specific objects like Connection, DataReader, DataAdapter and Command are prefixed with "EDB" so the EDB Connector/.NET specific classes are EDBConnection, EDBDataReader, EDBDataAdapter, EDBCommand and so on.