Learn Paths

Data Access in ASP.NET Core

Explore various strategies and technologies for accessing data in your ASP.NET Core applications, ensuring efficient and secure data management.

Understanding Data Access Patterns

Choosing the right approach for data access is crucial for application performance and maintainability. We'll cover:

• ORM Frameworks: Entity Framework Core (EF Core) and its advantages.
• Micro-ORM Frameworks: Dapper and its performance benefits.
• Raw SQL: When and how to use ADO.NET directly.
• Data Access Layers (DAL): Designing robust and testable data access components.

Entity Framework Core (EF Core)

Entity Framework Core is a modern, object-relational mapper (ORM) for .NET that enables developers to work with a database using .NET objects that typically correspond directly to tables in the database.

Key Concepts:

• DbContext: The primary class used to query and save data.
• DbSet: Represents a table in the database.
• Migrations: Managing database schema changes over time.
• LINQ to Entities: Querying data using Language Integrated Query.

Dive deeper into EF Core with our comprehensive guides:

Dapper: A Micro-ORM

Dapper is a high-performance, lightweight Object-Relational Mapper (ORM) that allows you to map query results to .NET objects with minimal overhead.

Key Benefits:

• Speed: Significantly faster than full ORMs for many scenarios.
• Simplicity: Easy to learn and integrate.
• Flexibility: Works well with existing SQL knowledge.

Explore Dapper's capabilities:

Working with Databases

We provide guidance on connecting to and interacting with various database systems commonly used with ASP.NET Core, including:

• SQL Server
• PostgreSQL
• MySQL
• SQLite
• NoSQL Databases (e.g., MongoDB, Azure Cosmos DB)