well the main difference between ADO and ADO.NET is that ADO is connection Oriented whereas ADO.NET is Connectionless (stateless).

Connectionless means that it's not necessary to get connected to the database all the time when the application is running . It can fetch data offline or it will make a connection automatically when data is to be fetched from the database and the connection will be closed thereof .

ADO is the other way round.

ADO has current record pointer. Where ADO.NET do not have that.

ADO has recordset.

In ADO environment we have to loop thru each record. Recordset points to only current record. To fetch next record we have to user MoveNext() method of recordset.

In ADO.Net We have 2 types in getting the recrods. One is using with connection and the other one with disconnected connection.

With connected connection we have to loop thru record by record (Fast Forward only Read only). But here movenext() method is not necessary.

With disconnected connection We have dataset(nothing but mini database) contains whole data in table(s) on the client side. So we can traverse back and forth with the data.