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ADO.NET: Execute a Command

Commands are issued against databases to take actions against data stores. For example, you could execute a command that inserts or deletes data. For more information on moving data into and out of databases, see "Update a Database from a DataSet". Commands include any command that can be issued against a database, and in the case of the OleDbCommand, can be data store specific. For example, you could issue a stored procedure call for a command, or perhaps a command to "set quoted_identifier on". Whatever the command may be, the OleDbCommand or SqlCommand can be used to get the command to your back-end data store.

With ADO classic, you could issue commands through the Command object, Connection object, or Recordset object. In ADO.NET, only the Command object executes commands.

To issue a command against a database, the Command object must have two basic things: a Connection and CommandText, both of which can be set in the constructor. To execute the command, the Connection has to be open and not in fetching state:


Dim InsertCmdString As String
InsertCmdString = "Insert into Region (RegionID, RegionDescription) VALUES (100, 'Description')"
Dim mySqlCommand As SqlCommand = New SqlCommand(InsertCmdString, myConnection)

This topic covers executing non-result generating commands. To execute the command that does not return results, call the ExecuteNonQuery method.


mySqlCommand.ExecuteNonQuery()

The OleDbCommand and SqlCommand objects have parameter collections that behave like the parameter collections from ADO classic. You can pass your parameters inline:


mySqlCommand.CommandText = "myStoredProc 'CustId'"

Or by using the Parameters collection:


workParam = mySqlCommand.Parameters.Add("@CustomerID", SQLDataType.NChar, 5)
workParam.Value = "NewID"

For more information about using parameters, see Getting Out Parameters from a Stored Procedure.

The following sample shows how to execute an insert command against a SQL database using the SqlCommand.

VB executingacommand.aspx

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