In the 2.0 release of ADO.NET, we not only wanted to make existing scenarios easier, but also enable new scenarios that either were just not possible before, or were far from ideal.
Asynchronous command execution is a good example of that. In releases of ADO.NET before 2.0, it wasn't possible to execute a command and not wait for it to complete before continuing execution. The addition of an asynchronous API enables scenarios where it is important for the application to continue execution without waiting for the database to complete the operation.
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