SqlConnectionStringBuilder
You know, working with connection strings has never been 'hard' but it's always been a pain in the ass- especially when you know all the information but you don't remember the exact order. This is hardly the most impressive thing I've come across in ADO.NET 2.0 - but I really like it - and if you're using Yukon - there's another cool little feature:
SqlConnectionStringBuilder sb = new SqlConnectionStringBuilder();
sb.DataSource = "Bill_2k3";
sb.InitialCatalog = "Northwind";
sb.IntegratedSecurity = true;
sb.Encrypt = true;
SqlConnection cn = new SqlConnection(sb.ToString());
cn.Open();
cn.Close();
So as long as you know the server name and DB you want to work with - you can get cranking (assuming you're using Trusted Connection. But the whole way of dealing with it seems so much more RDBMS. The whole ConnectionString thing has always seemed so anti-Relational and Non -OOP because it wreaks with MultiValued fieldness. Sure - managing connectionstrings is not exactly a huge problem threatening to bring the industry to its knees, but this is one of those nice features that makes working in Visual Studio .NET 2005 more pleasant to deal with - and there's tons of them. It also typifies that even though the ADO.NET 2.0 team is working hard to bring us some hard core stuff- they still pay attention to detail as far as user experience goes.
BTW, this is hardly an exhaustive example - there's a ton more stuff in it like FailOver partner, which I haven't gotten to work yet but feel I'm on the verge of success any minute now.