Professional ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 Edition: In C# and VB

Chapter 32. ADO.NET Data Services

Many of the new features that have been introduced with the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 release really do focus on the concept of the Entity Data Model (EDM) and what these models bring to your application's reusability. Again, an EDM is an abstract conceptual model of data as you want to represent it in your code. You will find more information on EDMs and how you can work with them in Chapter 29 of this book.

Another new feature found in this release of the .NET Framework is the ADO.NET Data Services (known as Project Astoria during the time it was being introduced to developers). This feature enables you to easily create a cloud interface to your client applications that provides everything from simple read capabilities to a full CRUD model (create, read, update, and delete functions).

In working with ASP.NET, there is now a lot more focus on putting work down on the client as well as the server. Though in the past, much of the development focused on performing as much on the server as possible and delivering completed operations and UI back down to the client simply for viewing. With the release of "smart clients" and Ajax-enabled applications, much of the work is now being offloaded to the client. ADO.NET Data Services makes it even easier than before to expose backend capabilities over the wire to enable more work to be performed on the client.

ADO.NET Data Services works to create a services layer to your backend data source. Doing so yourself, especially ...