Search code examples
c#sqlinterfaceasynchronoussqlclient

System.Data.IDbCommand and asynchronous execution?

System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand has methods 

BeginExecuteNonQuery
BeginExecuteReader
BeginExecuteXmlReader

and

EndExecuteNonQuery
EndExecuteReader
EndExecuteXmlReader

for asynchronous execution.

System.Data.IDbCommand only has

ExecuteNonQuery
ExecuteReader
ExecuteXmlReader

which are for synchronous operations only.

Is there any interface for asynchronous operations ?
In addition, why is there no BeginExecuteScalar ?

Solution

  • IDbCommand does not have the begin/end async methods because they did not yet exist in the original .NET 1.1 release of ADO.NET, and when the async methods were added in .NET 2.0 it would have been a breaking change to add those to IDbCommand (adding members to an interface is a breaking change for implementors of that interface).

    I don't know why BeginExecuteScalar doesn't exist, but it can be implemented as an extension method that wraps around BeginExecuteReader. Anyway in .NET 4.5 we now have ExecuteScalarAsync which is easier to use.