The DataTable is a central object in the ADO.NET library. Other objects that use the DataTable include the DataSet and the DataView.

When accessing DataTable objects, note that they are conditionally case sensitive. For example, if one DataTable is named "mydatatable" and another is named "Mydatatable", a string used to search for one of the tables is regarded as case sensitive. However, if "mydatatable" exists and "Mydatatable" does not, the search string is regarded as case insensitive. A DataSet can contain two DataTable objects that have the same TableName property value but different Namespace property values. For more information about working with DataTable objects, see Creating a DataTable.

If you are creating a DataTable programmatically, you must first define its schema by adding DataColumn objects to the DataColumnCollection (accessed through the Columns property). For more information about adding DataColumn objects, see Adding Columns to a DataTable.

To add rows to a DataTable, you must first use the NewRow method to return a new DataRow object. The NewRow method returns a row with the schema of the DataTable, as it is defined by the table‘s DataColumnCollection. The maximum number of rows that a DataTable can store is 16,777,216. For more information, see Adding Data to a DataTable.

The DataSet and DataTable objects inherit from MarshalByValueComponent, and support the ISerializable interface for .NET Framework remoting. These are the only ADO.NET objects that you can use for .NET Framework remoting.