Question

If I wish to add some information to my SQL Server database, must I do it through a DataSet and a DataAdapter ?

The idea is that if my database has 1-2 million entries, isn’t my memory going to be occupied unnecessary with the 1-2 mil rows in the DataSet considering that I want to add only one row? Is there an alternative ?

Answer 1

You could always create a plain old ADO.NET parametrized SqlCommand holding a simple SQL INSERT statement, and provide parameters, and load the data that way (nothing needs to be loaded, doesn’t matter how many rows you already have – it will just work):

string insertStmt = "INSERT INTO dbo.YourTable(col1, col2, ...., colN) " +
   "VALUES(@Value1, @Value2, ...., @ValueN)";

using(SqlConnection _con = new SqlConnection(-your-connection-string-here))
using(SqlCommand _cmdInsert = new SqlCommand(insertStmt, _con))    
{
   // define the parameters for your query
   _cmdInsert.Parameters.Add("@Value1", SqlDbType.Int);
    .......

   // set the values
   _cmdInsert.Parameters["@Value1"].Value = 4711;
   .....

   _con.Open();
   int rowsInserted = _cmdInsert.ExecuteNonQuery();
   _con.Close();
}  

If you have multiple rows to insert, you could loop over e.g. a list of objects, set the values for our _cmdInsert for each object, and execute the _cmdInsert.ExecuteNonQuery() for each row.

Of course, if you use something like an ORM (NHibernate, Linq-to-SQL, Entity Framework), that work might get infinitely easier – just insert new objects into your collection and save them – the ORM will deal with all the nitty-gritty details (and basically do this code I showed above and execute it – more or less).