I've been playing around trying to bind textbox controls and datagrids
to typed datasets. Up until recently, I never used DataBindings. I
always manually wrote the value into a textbox and stored its value
after the textbox lost focus or whenever someone manually saved the
record. I came to the conclusion after a long time and after many apps
have been developed that there had to be a better way. What I thought
would have been great is simply create a typed dataset, use the IDE to
connect to the fields at design time and voila - instant binding. This
does work fine for very simple situations where there is a clear
parent-child relationship and controls are generally textboxes,
listboxes or even comboboxes. But reality started to sink in when my
dataset started becoming far more complex with many-to-many
relationships, complex relationships and what-have-you. What initially
started out as drag-drop, wizards and
"select-what's-available-in-the-property-window" started to require
coding enhancements such as BindingContext, CurrencyManager, DataViews,
and so on. After a while, I stood back and looked at the mess and began
seriously questioning what the point of it all was. I was trying to
avoid manually coding the databindings, updates, inserts, deletes, etc.
but I began to see almost as much code invested in getting automatic
binding to work. So the question is - it it really worth it? What do I
really gain? Has anyone done application development both ways to make
a comment? Any alternative suggestions?
Thanks
Johann Blake