ADO.NET 2.0 - The latest update.
I had the pleasure of speaking with Angel Saenz-Badillos of the ADO.NET team this evening and it was way cool. He's got to be one of the coolest guys I've chatted with in a long time. Anyway, I'm tired as heck so I'll write up a bunch of notes this weekend when I have some time but it was very enlightening. Objectspaces and ResultSets are off the table as is Paging. There's no official word but I didn't get the vibe that Objectspaces were on the list at all - not even in a future service pack as has widely been reported. Ok, so that's the bad news, what's the good news?
Well, MARS is still going to be implemented and IF used correctly, there's a huge potential for some serious performance increases. BulkCopy is another feature that's definitely on the Cool Feature list. I ran a loop while I was at the gym to pump my SQL Server with dummy data so I could test it out. I figured 10 million records ought to be a good enough test for now. So got back, did a DataAdapter fill, (which took FOREVER), then in on line, tried a Bulk Update. It was UNREAL. Unreal is not even the word for it because, well, it was real. But don't take my word for it, if you have the new framework, try it out for yourself. You can shove 50,000 records into a db so fast you won't believe it actually worked. I'm still in shock over this. The Batch Update feature is pretty darned cool too. I can't do it justice now, but there's a lot to write here and it's ALL GOOD. Two other really cool features...SqlConnectionStringBuilder - I know it sounds dorky and useless but it's precisely the opposite. And there's the TransactionScope in the System.Transactions namespace (you need to add a reference to System.Transactions if you want to try it). Works with SqlClient, OracleClient and MSMQ. It's another thing I'm still in shock over b/c it works and so far, it works perfectly. If you are familiar with Distributed Transactions and what a pain they USED TO BE (or could be), you'll fall in love with this immediatley. Again I can't do it justice without a full write up so I'll have to defer. I promise though, I'll get it out this weekend.
ADO.NET 2.0 is so damned cool.