Which Microsoft Technology worth to learn?

Question

Hi all,

Today i've seen there is so many new Technology from microsoft in .NET.
For example : WCF, WPF, WF, ADO Entity Framework etc..

For Database Access itself so many techology : ADO.NET, LINQ, ADO Entity Framework, etc..
My Question is..
Just for Database Access,which technology should man learn?

Thanks

Answer 1

Hi wapt49,

LINQ-To-SQL does not invalidate ADO.NET, nor does it make ADO.NET superfluous. For Linq-to-SQL there is no public provider model available at this time so Linq-to-SQL supports only SQL Server and SQL Server Compact 3.5.

ADO.NET is build around concepts like DataSet and DataTable while LINQ has the concept of "query" at its core.

The Entity Framework on the other side, is THE data technology Microsoft is now pushing forward. It is a very interesting and powerful ORM-like toolset, but be aware that EF is still evolving.

So I would argue, for a starting, to get along with the core data access technology available in the .NET Framework which is ADO.NET keeping an eye on EF.

Marcel