using intellisense to pull data from a database

[Jeff Patrick]

I have a series of class libraries. Some of the functions require string
constants to be passed in in order to effect certain behavior. Over time the
list of strings that could be passed in grew rather large and developers
often made mistakes by typing the wrong string in. I converted the string to
be numbers and started using enums. That way the developer just references
the appropriate assembly and then intellisense offers a drop-down of the
appropriate enum. Looks like this:

<top class>.customErrors.ERR_DATAACCESS_CONNECTIONMANAG ER

<top class>.customErrors.ERR_FILEACCESS_INIFILEREADER

<top class>.customErrors.ERR_GENERIC_LIBRARY_ERROR

etc - you get the idea. They get passed into a function that can act on it
appropriately by quering the database for the corresponding string value.
The problem is that the number of possible entries grows and then I have to
add it to the enum list and recompile.

My question - is there a way to simulate something similiar but allow the
enum values to query from a list of table values in a database? Obviously
this wouldn't be an enum anymore. Basically I just want the developer to be
able to type: foobar.customErrors.<dynamic list> and then rather than a
static list of values it would pull from a database.

Make sense? Any ideas?

Thanks,

- Jeff