iTypedList - GetItemProperti es() - generating properties at runtime

[Chankama]

Hi. I am making an application using the Compact Framework for a PPC.
Essentially what I am trying to do is, read a table from a external
datasource, and try to display it using the datagrid. For my purposes, I
can't use DataTable and DataSet, etc. etc. ie. So I am implementing
iTypedList. To put it simply, I need to override the 'Count' property such
that the datagrid will know the exact number of elements in my external
datasource, but only retrieve the rows on a needed basis (instead of loading
the complete table consisting of 1000's of rows into memory using a
DataTable/DataSet). Sadly, I can't just extend DataTable since the methods I
need to override are not virtual/override.

Now the problem occurs when I am implementing the GetItemProperti es() method
in iTypedList. Typically, you would just retrieve all the necessary
properties from the "Row" object and create the the
PropertyDescrip torCollection object. Now my problem is, until I read the
table from the external data source, I don't know what the "Row" objects
properties should be (ie. I don't know the schema of the row object until
run-time). I was trying to figure out how DataRow/DataTable did this, but
had no luck.

DataRow seems to have an 'Object [] ItemArray' property which looks
promising. Sadly, I couldn't figure out how to create the
PropertyDescrpt orCollection using an Array object. If I could figure this
out, all I need is one array object, and my schema/data values will be
contained within this array. Then within the GetItemProperti es() method I
can generate the proper descriptors. The other option would be to I guess
generate a custom "Row" object with the correct schema during runtime. But
since the PropertyBuilder class is not supported under the Compact
Framework, I don't think that's feasible - or memory efficient for that
matter..

If anyone has any suggestions, that would be great!. Thanks in advance.

Chankama