The CData ADO.NET Provider for Azure Table Storage implements two ADO.NET interfaces you can use to retrieve data from Azure Table Storage: AzureTablesDataAdapter and AzureTablesDataReader objects. Whereas AzureTablesDataAdapter objects retrieve a single result set of all the data that matches a query, AzureTablesDataReader objects fetch data in subset increments as needed.

Using the AzureTablesDataReader

The AzureTablesDataReader retrieves data faster than the AzureTablesDataAdapter because it can retrieve data in pages. As you read data from the AzureTablesDataReader, it periodically requests the next page of results from the data source, if required. This causes results to be returned at a faster rate. The following example selects all the columns from the NorthwindProducts table:

C#

string connectionString = "AccessKey=myAccessKey;Account=myAccountName;";

using (AzureTablesConnection connection = new AzureTablesConnection(connectionString)) {
  AzureTablesCommand cmd = new AzureTablesCommand("SELECT * FROM NorthwindProducts", connection);
  
  AzureTablesDataReader rdr = cmd.ExecuteReader();

  while (rdr.Read()) {
    Console.WriteLine(String.Format("\t{0} --> \t\t{1}", rdr["PartitionKey"], rdr["Name"]));
  }
}

VB.NET

Dim connectionString As String = "AccessKey=myAccessKey;Account=myAccountName;"

Using connection As New AzureTablesConnection(connectionString)
  Dim cmd As New AzureTablesCommand("SELECT * FROM NorthwindProducts", connection)

  Dim rdr As AzureTablesDataReader = cmd.ExecuteReader()

  While rdr.Read()
    Console.WriteLine([String].Format(vbTab & "{0} --> " & vbTab & vbTab & "{1}", rdr("PartitionKey"), rdr("Name")))
  End While
End Using