The Web Server Environment - Database Processing: Fundamentals, Design, and Implementation - page 449

• .NET for Windows Store Apps
• Portable Class Libraries
• Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF)

4.5

• Parallel LINQ (PLINQ)
• Task Parallel Library (TPL)

4.0

• Language Integrated Query (LINQ)
• ADO.NET Entity Framework
• ADO.NET Data Services
• ADO.NET AJAX

3.5

• Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
• Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
• Windows Workflow Foundation (WWF)

3.0

• ASP.NET
• ADO.NET
• Base Class Library
• Common Language Runtime

2.0

Figure 11-10
the Microsoft .NEt
Framework Structure

Windows 8 Apps, including .NET for Windows Store Apps , Portable Class Libraries , and the
Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) . For more information on .NET Framework 4.5, see
the Microsoft MSDN Web page What's New in the .NET Framework 4.5 at http://msdn.microsoft
.com/en-us/library/ms171868.aspx .
Now that we understand the basic structure of the .NET Framework, we can look at some
of the pieces in detail.

By ThE WAy The Microsoft Entity Data Model (EDM) is similar in concept to the Semantic
Object Model discussed in Appendix H of this topic. A discussion of the
EDM can be found at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa697428(VS.80).aspx .

OLE DB
ODBC has been a tremendous success and has greatly simplified some database development
tasks. However, it does have some disadvantages, and in particular one substantial disadvan-
tage that Microsoft addressed by creating OLE DB. Figure 11-11 shows the relationship among
OLE DB, ODBC, and other data types. OLE DB is one of the foundations of data access in the
Microsoft world. As such, it is important to understand the fundamental ideas of OLE DB, even
if you will only work with the ADO.NET interface that lies on top of it because, as you will see,
OLE DB remains as a data provider to ADO.NET. In this section, we present essential OLE DB
concepts and use them to introduce some important object-oriented programming topics.
OLE DB provides an object-oriented interface to data of almost any type. DBMS vendors can
wrap portions of their native libraries in OLE DB objects to expose their product's functionality