DataSets were one of the big things in .NET 1.0 and even now when using .NET 3.5 I still find myself having to use them....especially when I have to call a stored proc which returns a dataset which I then end up having to manually transform into an object to make it easier to work with.
I've never really liked DataSets and have found them annoying to use...and as a result I've tended to keep my knowledge about them to a bare minimum (probably a very bad thing!). I also prefer to quickly transform them into an object or list of objects so I can easily manipulate them in my code.
Have DataSets passed their use by date? With the advent of O/R mappers such as NHibernate, I'm wondering if DataSets will die out or is there still a place for them? At the moment, I'm torn between whether I should set aside time to revisit DataSets and learn how to use them properly or to get behind O/R mappers 100% and just ditch DataSets altogether.
Do DataSets offer anything that technologies such as NHibernate and LINQ etc can't? If not, why then do we still use them?