What is the difference between ADO and ADO.NET?

ADO uses Recordsets and cursors to access and modify data. Because of its inherent design, Recordset can impact performance on the server side by tying up valuable resources. In addition, COM marshalling - an expensive data conversion process - is needed to transmit a Recordset. ADO.NET addresses three important needs that ADO doesn't address:

1. Providing a comprehensive disconnected data-access model, which is crucial to the Web environment
2. Providing tight integration with XML, and
3. Providing seamless integration with the .NET Framework (e.g., compatibility with the base class library's type system). From an ADO.NET implementation perspective, the Recordset object in ADO is eliminated in the .NET architecture. In its place, ADO.NET has several dedicated objects led by the DataSet object and including the DataAdapter, and DataReader objects to perform specific tasks. In addition, ADO.NET DataSets operate in disconnected state whereas the ADO RecordSet objects operated in a fully connected state.

In ADO, the in-memory representation of data is the RecordSet. In ADO.NET, it is the dataset. A RecordSet looks like a single table. If a RecordSet is to contain data from multiple database tables, it must use a JOIN query, which assembles the data from the various database tables into a single result table. In contrast, a dataset is a collection of one or more tables. The tables within a dataset are called data tables; specifically, they are DataTable objects. If a dataset contains data from multiple database tables, it will typically contain multiple DataTable objects. That is, each DataTable object typically corresponds to a single database table or view. In this way, a dataset can mimic the structure of the underlying database.

In ADO you scan sequentially through the rows of the RecordSet using the ADO MoveNext method. In ADO.NET, rows are represented as collections, so you can loop through a table as you would through any collection, or access particular rows via ordinal or primary key index. A cursor is a database element that controls record navigation, the ability to update data, and the visibility of changes made to the database by other users. ADO.NET does not have an inherent cursor object, but instead includes data classes that provide the functionality of a traditional cursor. For example, the functionality of a forward-only, read-only cursor is available in the ADO.NET DataReader object.

There is one significant difference between disconnected processing in ADO and ADO.NET. In ADO you communicate with the database by making calls to an OLE DB provider. In ADO.NET you communicate with the database through a data adapter (an OleDbDataAdapter, SqlDataAdapter, OdbcDataAdapter, or OracleDataAdapter object), which makes calls to an OLE DB provider or the APIs provided by the underlying data source.

 

What is the difference between VB and VB.NET?

Now VB.NET is object-oriented language. The following are some of the differences:

Data Type Changes

The .NET platform provides Common Type System to all the supported languages. This means that all the languages must support the same data types as enforced by common language runtime. This eliminates data type incompatibilities between various languages. For example on the 32-bit Windows platform, the integer data type takes 4 bytes in languages like C++ whereas in VB it takes 2 bytes. Following are the main changes related to data types in VB.NET:

. Under .NET the integer data type in VB.NET is also 4 bytes in size.
. VB.NET has no currency data type. Instead it provides decimal as a replacement.
. VB.NET introduces a new data type called Char. The char data type takes 2 bytes and can store Unicode characters.
. VB.NET do not have Variant data type. To achieve a result similar to variant type you can use Object data type. (Since every thing in .NET including primitive data types is an object, a variable of object type can point to any data type).
. In VB.NET there is no concept of fixed length strings.
. In VB6 we used the Type keyword to declare our user-defined structures. VB.NET introduces the structure keyword for the same purpose.
Declaring Variables
Consider this simple example in VB6:
Dim x,y as integer


In this example VB6 will consider x as variant and y as integer, which is somewhat odd behavior. VB.NET corrects this problem, creating both x and y as integers.

Furthermore, VB.NET allows you to assign initial values to the variables in the declaration statement itself:
br> Dim str1 as string = Hello

VB.NET also introduces Read-Only variables. Unlike constants Read-Only variables can be declared without initialization but once you assign a value to it, it cannot be changes.

Initialization here
Dim readonly x as integer
In later code
X=100
Now x can't be changed
X=200 *********** Error **********
Property Syntax
In VB.NET, we anymore don't have separate declarations for Get and Set/Let. Now, everything is done in a single property declaration. This can be better explained by the following example.
Public [ReadOnly | WriteOnly] Property PropertyName as Datatype
Get
Return m_var
End Get
Set
M_var = value
End Set
End Property
Example:
Private _message as String
Public Property Message As String
Get
Return _message
End Get
Set
_message = Value
End Set
End Property

ByVal is the default - This is a crucial difference betwen VB 6.0 and VB.NET, where the default in VB 6.0 was by reference. But objects are still passed by reference.

Invoking Subroutines In previous versions of VB, only functions required the use of parentheses around the parameter list. But in VB.NET all function or subroutine calls require parentheses around the parameter list. This also applies, even though the parameter list is empty.

User-Defined Types - VB.NET does away with the keyword Type and replaces it with the keyword Structure
Public Structure Student
Dim strName as String
Dim strAge as Short
End Structure
Procedures and Functions

In VB6 all the procedure parameters are passed by reference (ByRef) by default. In VB.NET they are passed by value (ByVal) by default. Parantheses are required for calling procedures and functions whether they accept any parameters or not. In VB6 functions returned values using syntax like: FuntionName = return_value. In VB.NET you can use the Return keyword (Return return_value) to return values or you can continue to use the older syntax, which is still valid.

Scoping VB.NET now supports block-level scoping of variables. If your programs declare all of the variables at the beginning of the function or subroutine, this will not be a problem. However, the following VB 6.0 will cause an issue while upgrading to VB .NET

Do While objRs.Eof
Dim J as Integer
J=0
If objRs("flag")="Y" then
J=1
End If
objRs.MoveNext
Wend
If J Then
Msgbox "Flag is Y"
End If

In the above example the variable J will become out of scope just after the loop, since J was declared inside the While loop.

Exception Handling

The most wanted feature in earlier versions of VB was its error handling mechanism. The older versions relied on error handlers such as "On Error GoTo and On Error Resume Next. VB.NET provides us with a more stuructured approach. The new block structure allows us to track the exact error at the right time. The new error handling mechanism is refered to as Try...Throw...Catch...Finally. The following example will explain this new feature.

Sub myOpenFile()
Try
Open "myFile" For Output As #1
Write #1, myOutput
Catch
Kill "myFile"
Finally
Close #1
End try
End Sub

The keyword SET is gone - Since everything in VB.NET is an object. So the keyword SET is not at all used to differentiate between a simple variable assignment and an object assignment. So, if you have the following statement in VB 6.0

Set ObjConn = Nothing
Should be replaced as
ObjConn = Nothing.
Constructor and Destructor

The constructor procedure is one of the many new object-oriented features of VB.NET. The constructor in VB.NET replaces the Class_Initialize in VB 6.0. All occurance of Class_Initialize in previous versions of VB should now be placed in a class constructor. In VB.NET, a constructor is added to a class by adding a procedure called New. We can also create a class destructor, which is equivalent to Class_Terminate event in VB 6.0, by adding a sub-procedure called Finalize to our class. Usage of Return In VB.NET, we can use the keyword return to return a value from any function. In previous versions, we used to assign the value back with the help of the function name itself. The following example explains this:

Public Function Sum (intNum1 as Integer, intNum2 as Integer) as Integer
Dim intSum as Integer
intSum = intNum1 + intNum2
Return intSum
End Function
Static Methods

VB.NET now allows you to create static methods in your classes. Static methods are methods that can be called without requiring the developer to create instance of the class. For example, if you had a class named Foo with the non-static method NonStatic() and the static method Static(), you could call the Static() method like so:

Foo.Static()

However, non-static methods require than an instance of the class be created, like so:

Create an instance of the Foo class
Dim objFoo as New Foo()
Execute the NonStatic() method
ObjFoo.NonStatic()

To create a static method in a VB.NET, simply prefix the method definition with the keyword Shared.