[Mono-list] System.Data

Rodrigo Moya rodrigo@ximian.com
24 Jan 2002 20:49:14 +0100


On Thu, 2002-01-24 at 08:43, Mark Hurley wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 23, 2002 at 07:50:22PM -0600, Chris Podurgiel wrote:
> > Everyone,
> > I've spoken with Miguel about how the System.Data namespace should be implemented, and he sugested I post my thoughts on the mono-list.  According to the Mono site It was believed that we could just write a wrapper to GnomeDB.  After looking at the Namespace, I noticed that there has been a major overhaul to ADO, with new concepts like the DataSet, DataReaders, and the ability to synchronize a DataSet with an XmlDataDocument. I believe a wrapper to GnomeDB would have been great if ADO.NET wasn't an architectural overhaul from the previous versions of ADO.
> > 
> > This brings up another topic of conversation.  .NET currently has two data providers: a SQL Server Data Provider, and an OLE DB Data Provider.  I'm not very familiar with Databases and Data access on the Linux/Unix platform.  Would there need to be another Data Provider for the Linux platform?
> 
> Wow...now your talking right up my alley.  I have researched the
> System.Data namespace and to be more exact ADO.NET in-depth.  I can
> actually *almost* tell you what MS does and doesn't do with Datasets
> according to the Xml Schema standard (Xsd).  What the validating reader
> does and doesn't do.  How useful (and not so useful) the new
> databinding can be.
> 
> I can help code, but am very tied for at least the next eight weeks.
> 
> If anyone needs any specific information (no, I don't know it all) I
> would be willing to provide additional information that I have
> learned, by reading/digging and using.
> 
> I'm not familiar with GnomeDb.  But if it is like any db wrapper, it
> will not solve all of the namespace requirements.
> 
> For those who are use to ADO... a good comparison is the dataset is a
> container with datatables, data relations connecting the tables.  But
> the dataset has no cursor functionality itself.  In ADO, the
> recordset provided a storage container (sort of) and a pointer to the
> current row of data.
> 
GNOME-DB has also abandoned that cursor-oriented datasets (although they
are still possible, of course). We use data models, which seem to be
more or less similar to DataReaders. Data models are just like arrays,
with a specific value in each cell, and you can access them just by
index, as with any other array. And values can be anything, even lists
or enumerations.

cheers
-- 
Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo@gnome-db.org> - <rodrigo@ximian.com>
http://www.gnome-db.org/ - http://www.ximian.com/