In this chapter, we reviewed the basics of data access in relational models. First, we examined the concepts behind the relational model itself, including its basic and fundamental principles, its architecture, and the properties of relational tables.

Then, we went through the Microsoft tools offered to work with these models, such as SQL Server 2014 Express Edition, and SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), revising their programmatic and operational offers in editing, debugging, analyzing execution, and so on.

After a brief note on the T-SQL language, we covered a not-well-known type of project that Visual Studio proposed, SQL Server Projects, and saw how we can create and manage packages (.dacpac files) that help us manage and administer any database and reproduce its structure in another RDBMS.

Finally, we reviewed some data access options from within Visual Studio, demonstrating how to access data using two technologies that are widely known and accepted, ADO.NET (using a Windows Presentation Foundation application) and Entity Framework, inside a ASP.NET MVC application.

In the next chapter, we will switch from the relational to the noSQL model, and we'll study its advantages and disadvantages and work with the MongoDB noSQL database in both ways: from the tools offered by the product and also from Visual Studio.