ADO.NET is a set of classes that expose data access services to the .NET Applications. ADO ( or ActiveX Data Objects ) is an easy-to-use yet extensible technology for adding database connectivity to Web pages. ADO.NET is the next generation of ADO, providing the interface for accessing, manipulating, and exchanging data in the Microsoft .NET Framework.
The ADO.NET components have been designed to factor data access from data manipulation. There are two central components of ADO.NET that accomplish this: the DataSet, and the .NET Framework data provider, which is a set of components including the Connection, Command, DataReader, and DataAdapter objects.