Datasheet

When combined with ADO.NET, C# has the ability to access quickly and generically data stores such as
SQL Server and Oracle databases. The returned datasets can easily be manipulated using the ADO.NET
object model, and automatically render as XML for transport across an office intranet.
Once a database schema has been established for a new project, C# presents an excellent medium for
implementing a layer of data access objects, each of which could provide insertion, updates, and dele-
tion access to a different database table.
Because it’s the first component-based C language, C# is a great language for implementing a business
object tier, too. It encapsulates the messy plumbing for inter-component communication, leaving devel-
opers free to focus on gluing their data access objects together in methods that accurately enforce their
organizations’ business rules. Moreover, with attributes, C# business objects can be outfitted for method-
level security checks, object pooling, and JIT activation supplied by COM+ Services. Furthermore, .NET
ships with utility programs that allow your new .NET business objects to interface with legacy COM
components.
To create an enterprise application with C#, you create a Class Library project for the data access objects
and another for the business objects. While developing, you can use Console projects to test the methods
on your classes. Fans of extreme programming can build Console projects that can be executed automati-
cally from batch files to unit test that working code has not been broken.
On a related note, C# and .NET will probably influence the way you physically package your reusable
classes. In the past, many developers crammed a multitude of classes into a single physical component
because this arrangement made deployment a lot easier; if there was a versioning problem, you knew
just where to look. Because deploying .NET enterprise components involves simply copying files into
directories, developers can now package their classes into more logical, discrete components without
encountering “DLL Hell.”
Last but not least, ASP.NET pages coded in C# constitute an excellent medium for user interfaces.
Because ASP.NET pages compile, they execute quickly. Because they can be debugged in the Visual
Studio 2005 IDE, they are robust. Because they support full-scale language features like early binding,
inheritance, and modularization, ASP.NET pages coded in C# are tidy and easily maintained.
Seasoned developers acquire a healthy skepticism about strongly hyped new technologies and lan-
guages and are reluctant to utilize new platforms simply because they are urged to. If you’re an enter-
prise developer in an IT department, though, or if you provide application services across the World
Wide Web, let us assure you that C# and .NET offer at least four solid benefits, even if some of the more
exotic features like XML Web services and server-side controls don’t pan out:
❑ Component conflicts will become infrequent and deployment is easier, because different ver-
sions of the same component can run side by side on the same machine without conflicting.
❑ Your ASP.NET code won’t look like spaghetti code.
❑ You can leverage a lot of the functionality in the .NET base classes.
❑ For applications requiring a Windows Forms user interface, C# makes it very easy to write this
kind of application.
Windows Forms have to some extent been downplayed in the past year due to the advent of Web Forms
and Internet-based applications. However, if you or your colleagues lack expertise in JavaScript, ASP, or
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