C# Lightweight Data Access From Windows Forms App

Question

I have a simple C# Application that requires access to an admin table which persists two variables.

Can someone tell me what is the fastest(in terms of dev time) method to interact with the database to retrieve and update the table. I don't wish to create an entire data layer just to gain access to a single table?

Answer 1

Linq To SQL is the best choice. You drag-and-drop your table from DB, get class generated then you can access your table as if it is just a variable in your program. I liked this tutorial: http://www.thereforesystems.com/linq-to-sql-tutorial/ but there are many others, just google.

Answer 2

You should use one of the existing ORM(-like) frameworks out there, such as:

• LINQ-to-Entities (preferred, you have support for it out of the box in VS.NET)
• LINQ-to-SQL (not so preferred, support from MS is waning and only supports SQL Server)
• NHibernate (you will need third party tools for design support in VS.NET)

Most (if not all) of these will allow you to specify your data source and simply drag tables to design surfaces at which point your Data Transfer Objects will be created for you, as well as the mechanisms to query and persist them back to the data store.

Answer 3

I'd go with Ado.Net and stored procedures

Answer 4

Plain old ADO.NET should be fine:

using (var conn = new SqlConnection("SOME CONNECTION STRING"))
using (var cmd = conn.CreateCommand())
{
    conn.Open();
    cmd.CommandText = "UPDATE mytable SET foo = 'bar'";
    cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();
}

Answer 5

What version of .NET do you use? If 3.5 or later, use LINQ2SQL marked up with attributes from the http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.data.linq.mapping.aspx namespace.