Developing Data Access Solutions with Microsoft Visual Studio

Course details

In this course, experienced developers who know the basics of data access (CRUD) in Windows client and Web application environments will learn to optimize their designs and develop better performing data access code by using the ADO.NET Entity Framework, LINQ, WCF Data Services, the Sync Framework, and ADO.NET.

Objectives

At Course Completion

After completing this course, students will be able to:

• Evaluate a variety of business cases, and then select an appropriate combination of data access technologies and tools most appropriate to each case. Describe the roles of Entity Framework,  WCF Data Services, and ADO.NET for building and maintaining applications. Use LINQ on top of these technologies to improve productivity and the quality of their applications.
• Use the tools provided with the Entity Framework to map the conceptual model used by the business logic of an application to the logical data model provided by a database.
• Query an Entity Data Model (EDM) by using common methods such as LINQ to Entities, Entity SQL, and the classes in the EntityClient namespace.
• Perform data modification tasks on data in an EDM.
• Explain the function of the Object Services model implemented by the Entity Framework and the support provided by the Object Services API for addressing the issues faced by enterprise applications that have to handle multiple concurrent users simultaneously accessing the same data .
• Describe best practices for designing and building a scalable, optimized data access layer by using Object Services.
• Customize and extend entities with their own business logic and use advanced mappings to shape the data model to their business and application requirements.
• Reuse existing business classes in a data access layer built by using the Entity Framework.
• Address the architectural issues that can arise when building an n-tier enterprise application by using the Entity Framework.
• Build extensible solutions that can update data in an n-tier enterprise application by using the Entity Framework.
• Access offline data or data that that has limited availability in client applications.
• Design, develop, and consume a simple WCF Data Service.
• Use WCF Data Services to update and delete data and to handle multi-user concerns.
• Develop high performance, scalable ADO.NET applications that can query and update data.
• Explain how LINQ to SQL enables development against a logical model which abstracts the low-level details of querying ADO.NET tables and result sets.

Module

• Module 1: Architecture and Data Access Technologies
• Module 2: Building Entity Data Models
• Module 3: Querying Entity Data
• Module 4: Creating, Updating, and Deleting Entity DataThis module introduces you to the ways that the Entity Framework enables you to modify the data in your database. You apply changes to the entities managed by the ObjectContext class. The ObjectContext class is responsible for tracking all changes to entities and then persisting these changes to the database on request.Lessons
• Module 5: Handling Multi-User Scenarios by Using Object Services
• Module 6: Building Optimized Solutions by Using Object Services
• Module 7: Customizing Entities and Building Custom Entity Classes
• Module 8: Using POCO Classes with the Entity Framework
• Module 9: Building an N-Tier Solution by Using the Entity Framework
• Module 10: Handling Updates in an N-Tier Solution by Using the Entity Framework
• Module 11: Building Occasionally Connected Solutions
• Module 12: Querying Data by Using WCF Data ServicesWindows Communication Foundation (WCF) Data Services enable you to create highly flexible data services that can be used to provide access to data across the Internet or a corporate network. You can access these services by using REST-style URIs, and they can be easily consumed by a wide variety of applications. As WCF Data Services are build on top of standard Internet protocols such as HTTP and the Atom Publishing Protocol, they are an ideal choice for delivering data to AJAX applications and Rich Interactive Applications built using technologies such as Microsoft Silverlight.
• Module 13: Updating Data by Using WCF Data ServicesThis module describes how to use WCF Data Services to create, update, and delete data. WCF Data Services use standard internet protocols such as HTTP and the Atom Publishing Protocol to enable update access to data across the Internet or a corporate network.
• Module 14: Using ADO.NET
• Module 15: Using LINQ to SQL