What is ADO.NET?
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Once upon a time, Microsoft created a standard set of API's that allowed programmers to access SQL and ODBC databases through a common programming interface. Since Microsoft's flagship technology at the time was known as ActiveX, they called it Active Data Objects, or ADO. When they decided to create a whole framework for developers to extend or implement in their code (.NET), they updated the acronym to comply with the new framework terminology, so they called it ADO.NET. MSDN: ADO.NET provides consistent access to data sources such as Microsoft SQL Server, as well as data sources exposed through OLE DB and XML. Data-sharing consumer applications can use ADO.NET to connect to these data sources and retrieve, manipulate, and update data. In VB.NET, this means that you can use the classes in System.Data (SqlClient and OleDb and their children) to access data stored in databases. What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable . . . and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? -- Hamlet, Act II, Scene ii.