Softgroup .Net Data Objects provides objects for accessing, editing, and updating data from a wide range of databases through an internal system named "Scripts Drivers".

With Softgroup .Net Data Objects developers can migrate old Microsoft Visual Basic data-oriented projects that use Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) to Microsoft ADO.NET technology based on .NET Framework without rewriting many lines of code. To facilitate the migration of source code Softgroup .Net Data Objects contains similar objects (same Properties and Methods) of Microsoft ADO (Connection, Recordset, Fields, Field, etc.)

In addition Softgroup .Net Data Objects contains other useful SQL objects and functions to query, insert, update and delete tables data on a database using auto-generated standard SQL statements that can be executed in all supported databases.

Common usage of Softgroup .Net Data Objects includes querying and manipulating the structure of a relational or non-relational database, retrieving and displaying the results in an application, and letting users make and save changes to the data.

Other tasks include:

• Open a Connection to a database
• Easy manipulation of database objects:
  • Databases:
  • Tables
  • Indexes
  • Primary Keys and Foreign Keys
  • Views
  • Procedures
  • Triggers
  • Groups
  • Users
  • Permissions
• Perform advanced operations on Databases like: enumerate existing databases, create or delete e database, backup or restore a database etc.
• Multilanguage advanced dialogs (with Unicode support) to Connect to a database, backup and restore operations (use of dialogs is optional)
• Querying a database using SQL and displaying the results
• Executing commands and stored procedures with parameters
• Dynamically create Recordset objects, to hold, navigate, and manipulate data like Microsoft ADO Recordset object also with Bookmark support
• Performing transactional database operations
• Transformation of a Recordset object to a .System.DataTable object
• Filtering and sorting local copies of database information based on run-time criteria
• Saving data from a database into an XML file
• A series of SQL objects and functions in order to standardize writing of SQL statements in your code (SQLSelect, SQLInsert, SQLUpdate and SQLDelete)
• Support for Unicode databases

Softgroup .Net Data Objects can be used to write .Net data-oriented solutions supporting almost all existing commercial databases types using one single component.

A Script Driver is a .INI Windows file format that contains all the necessary instructions used by Softgroup .Net Data Objects objects for provide access to all supported database functionality.Script Drivers are supplied for:

• Microsoft Access
• Microsoft SQL Server / MSDE
• Oracle
• MySQL
• PostgreSQL
• FireBird
• SQLite

Script Driver can use a specific data provider based on one of these Microsoft data access technologies:

• ODBC Drivers
• OLEDB Drivers
• .NET Data Providers

It is possible to create new Script Drivers using instructions included in the Script Driver Guide supplied with the installation.