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A ton of great articles and tutorials on working with data in ASP.NET 2.0 applications has been published recently. This post highlights a few of them (including tools like SubSonic and NHibernate):

Working with Data in ASP.NET 2.0 Tutorial Series

Scott Mitchell recently finished writing his multi-part Working with Data in ASP.NET 2.0 tutorial series for the www.asp.net site.  This tutorial series contains more than 75 data tutorials (and over 750 pages of content!).  There are VB and C# versions available for all of the tutorials, and the articles can optionally be downloaded in PDF format.  If you haven't read the tutorials yet, I'd highly checking them out here. 

Below is the table of contents and links to the articles already published:

• Introduction (3 articles)
• Basic Reporting (3 articles)
• Master/Detail (4 articles)
• Custom Formatting (5 articles)
• Editing, Inserting, and Deleting Data (8 articles)
• Paging and Sorting (4 articles)
• Custom Button Actions (1 article)
• Displaying Data with the DataList and Repeater (4 articles)
• Filtering Scenarios with the DataList and Repeater (3 articles)
• Editing and Deleting Data Through the DataList (8 articles)
• Paging and Sorting with the DataList and Repeater (2 articles)
• Custom Button Actions with the DataList and Repeater (1 article)
• Accessing the Database Directly from an ASP.NET Page (4 articles)
• Enhancing the GridView (3 articles)
• Working with Binary Files (4 articles)

Scott still has 18 more tutorials in the series that will be published soon covering:

• Caching (4 tutorials)
• Data and the Site Map Provider (1 tutorial)
• Working with Batched Data (including transactions; 4 tutorials)
• Advanced Data Access Layer Scenarios (9 tutorials).

You can subscribe to this RSS feed to learn about updates when these tutorials are published.

Using ASP.NET 2.0's DataSource Controls

In addition to publishing the articles above on www.asp.net, Scott Mitchell is also writing some great data articles on using the ASP.NET 2.0 DataSource controls for the excellent www.4GuysFromRolla.com ASP.NET site. 

If you don't visit www.4GuysFromRolla.com, I highly recommend checking it out (it has tons of great, all free, content).  You can also subscribe to an RSS feed of the published 4GuysFromRolla RSS articles here (if you are an ASP.NET developer you should absolutely do this).

Here is a pointer to the current articles in the most recent 4GuysFromRolla ASP.NET 2.0 DataSource Control Series:

• Data Source Control Basics - explores the concepts of data source controls
• Accessing Database Data - shows how to use the SqlDataSource and AccessDataSource controls to query data from a relational database.
• Filtering Database Data with Parameters - learn how to retrieve just a subset of database data based on hard-coded values and values from the querystring, other Web controls on the page, session variables, and so on.
• Retrieving XML Data with XmlDataSource Control - see how to retrieve both remote and local XML data and display it in a data Web control.
• Creating Custom Parameter Controls - learn how to create your own custom, declarative <asp:parameter> controls for use in the data source controls' parameters collections.
• Examining the Data Source Control's Events - explore the events raised during a data source control's lifecycle.
• Declaratively Caching Data - learn how to cache data to the data cache simply by setting a couple of data source control properties.
• Programmatically Accessing Data using the Data Source Controls - programmatically retrieve, insert, delete, and update data using the SqlDataSource and AccessDataSource controls.

SubSonic 2.0 Beta 3

SubSonic 2.0 Beta 3 is now available for download.  SubSonic is a great (totally free) tool that helps you quickly build data driven web-sites.  It includes a DAL builder that enables you to rapidly create strongly typed collections and an object model for your data (it builds this at compile-time based on the schema of your website), as well as rich scaffolding support for automatically creating UI against this data.

Jon Galloway has a quick write-up of some of the new SubSonic 2.0 features that you can read here. 

If you are attending the MIX conference in two weeks, make sure to say hi to Rob Conery, who is the chief architect of SubSonic.  He will also be on a great Open Source Panel at the MIX conference, together with Miguel de Icaza (of Mono) and others.

NHibernate Best Practices with ASP.NET, 1.2 Ed.

Billy McCafferty updated his popular "NHibernate Best Practices with ASP.NET" article earlier this month.  You can read the latest version here.

This article covers some of the core things to think about when building an enterprise data layer using this popular (totally free) ORM implementation for .NET.  Also keep an eye out for this upcoming NHibernate in Action book scheduled to be released in July.

Hope this helps,

Scott