In earlier versions of ADO, the lack of a standard OLE DB trace made it difficult to resolve problems in OLE DB and ADO. This has been remedied in ADO.NET 2.0. ADO.NET 2.0 introduces new built-in data tracing functionality that is supported by the .NET data providers for SQL Server, Oracle, OLE DB and ODBC, as well as the ADO.NET DataSet, and the SQL Server 2005 network protocols.

Tracing data access API calls can help diagnose the following problems:

• Schema mismatch between client program and the database.

• Database unavailability or network library problems.

• Incorrect SQL whether hard coded or generated by an application.

• Incorrect programming logic.

• Issues resulting from the interaction between multiple ADO.NET components or between ADO.NET and your own components.

To support different trace technologies, tracing is extensible, so a developer can trace a problem at any level of the application stack. Although tracing is not an ADO.NET-only feature, Microsoft providers in ADO.NET 2.0 take advantage of generalized tracing and instrumentation APIs.

For more information on setting and configuring managed tracing in ADO.NET 2.0, see Tracing Data Access: A Gentle Introduction to ADO.NET 2.0 Trace Facilities.

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