Visual Studio® 2008 ALL-IN-ONE DESK REFERENCE FOR DUMMIES®

Chapter IV.1. Accessing Data with Visual Studio

In This Chapter

Nowadays, it's hard to find an application that isn't data-driven. Even if the application isn't centered around entering and viewing data, you might be surprised to find a tremendous amount of data access occurring behind the scenes — especially for Web sites. What might look like a static, boring Web site might be one that was built by using dynamic Web pages that get their content from a database.

Applications, such as Windows SharePoint Services, store all their information in databases. For example, when a user uploads an Excel document to a SharePoint document library, the file is stored in a database. Don't bother to traverse the file directory and look for the file, though, because it's not there.

Even when data isn't involved in an application, metadata might still be involved. Metadata is data about data, and it's showing up everywhere. For example, when you take a picture with a digital camera, the camera automatically stores the image resolution and thumb file format as metadata within the JPEG image. This information, which is the image's metadata, can be used to determine how the image appears in an application.

Yes, the world has gone data crazy. Fear not, however, because Visual Studio has everything you need for accessing data and metadata in your applications. This chapter shows you how to use Visual Studio to create data-driven applications without getting bogged down in all the technology that makes ...