Data Access Technologies in Microsoft World

Data Access Technologies in Microsoft World

It has been 12 years since I wrote my first book, A Programmer's Guide to ADO.NET in C# in year 2002. Wow! Time flies. It seems like yesterday. When I wrote my first book, Microsoft was still taking baby steps in building its one of the greatest developer platform, .NET. I remember there were only a few ways to work with databases. ODBC was still dominating the market and DAO and ADO were two other popular technologies to work with databases. ADO.NET and XML.NET was introduced as a part of .NET Framework to work with SQL Server and XML data.

Things have changed today. Microsoft has given us so much to work with data. As a matter of fact, sometimes it is overwhelming.

Here is a list of database access technologies in Microsoft world.

  • ODBC
  • ADO.NET
  • .NET XML Framework
  • MSXML
  • Entity Framework
  • LINQ to SQL
  • WCF Data Services
  • Sync Framework
  • OData
  • PowerPivot
  • SQL Server
  • SQL Server Compact
  • SQL Azure
  • SQL Server Services (SSAS, SSIS, SSMDS, SSRS, SSSB, SSSI)

To be frank, I've not been involved too much in coding in last 7 years or so. My role has changed. I've been doing more Enterprise Architecture, Project Management and Startup work. While I will continue to do so, I plan to get back to coding.

I guess it is time to get back into data development again. This week, I have started rewriting my Programming XML with C# book with .NET 4.5.

 

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