EziData Solutions

Web, NET and SQL Server

Using Strongly Typed Datasets

Creating and using a strongly-typed Dataset in ASP.NET provides an effective 2-tier architecture. Using the Northwind SQL Server database, in this post we will create a simple Dataset for use with some data-bound controls on an ASP.NET webpage.

To get started, add a folder called DAL, short for Data Access Layer, under the App_Code folder in a standard ASP.NET Web Site. In this folder, create a new Dataset called Customers.

Visual Studio will create the Dataset and launch the TableAdapter Configuration Wizard to guide you through the process of setting up the Dataset.

  1. Select an existing Connection, or if you haven't got a connection to Northwind already saed, hit the New Connection button.
  2. Choose the Use SQL statements option
  3. Enter the following SQL statement, or click the Query Builder button to visually create a simple SELECT query.
SELECT CustomerID, CompanyName, Address, City, PostalCode
FROM Customers

Visual Studio creates the Dataset complete with a TableAdapter. Build your web site, to make sure it compiles.

To show how easy it is to use this Dataset, create a new blank page in your ASP.NET web site called CustomerList and drag in a GridView control from the Toolbox. From the GridView Tasks popup, select <New Data Source> from the Choose Data Source drop-down list. The Data Source Configuration Wizard will open prompting you to select the source of your data. Normally you probably selected Database to connect to a SQL Server database, but to use our new Customers Dataset we need to select Object.

From the list of objects, select the CustomerTableAdapter.

Next, the wizard will display all the available methods that return DataTables. In our case there is only one, called GetData.

That's all there is to do. Our GridView is now bound to the DataSet. Fire up the webpage and see the results.

Posted: Nov 06 2009, 21:30 by Admin | Comments (0) RSS comment feed |
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Filed under: ASP.NET | C#