Retrieving Data from an Analytical Data Source

Once you make a connection and create the query, you can retrieve any data. In ADOMD.NET, you can retrieve data using three different objects (CellSet, AdomdDataReader, and System.Xml.XmlReader) by calling one of the Execute methods of the AdomdCommand object.

Each of these three objects balances interactivity and overhead:

  • Interactivity refers to the ease-of-use and amount of information available through the object model.

  • Overhead refers to the amount of traffic that an object model generates over the network connection to the server, the amount of memory needed for the object model, and the speed with which the object model retrieves data.

To help you select the data retrieval object that best suits the needs of your application, the following table highlights the differences between interactivity and overhead for each object.

Object

Interactivity

Overhead

Retains dimensionality

Usage Information

CellSet

Highest

Moderately high, which results in slowest retrieval of data

Yes

Retrieving Data Using the CellSet

AdomdDataAdapter

Moderate

Moderate

No

Populating a DataSet from a DataAdapter

AdomdDataReader

Moderate

Moderate

No

Retrieving Data Using the AdomdDataReader

System.Xml.XmlReader

Lowest

Lowest, which results in fastest data retrieval

Yes

Retrieving Data Using the XmlReader

See Also

Reference