ASP.NET 3.5 Enterprise Application Development with Visual Studio® 2008: Problem - Design - Solution

2.4. Summary

The main points of this chapter reflect the main functions of the data access layer:

• The model used to communicate between the DAL and the database

• The model used to communicate between the BLL and the database

• The most frequently used objects in ADO.NET

• The pattern exposed by the SqlHelper class, which overloads each method with connection strings, connection objects, or transaction objects

• The new LINQ to SQL objects and the ORM Designer

• The differences between the default functionality in LINQ to SQL and using stored procedures

• The base classes and standard structure for all DAL classes in the application going forward

The example in this book uses LINQ to SQL for this application, but if you are not ready to make the move to Visual Studio 2008 or you're hesitant to use such a new technology, then you could follow the exact same design pattern using custom entity objects to pass data back to the BLL and use the SqlHelper class to communicate using ADO.NET objects with the database.