Ok, who wants to banish Greg? Bags not. On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 3:55 PM, Greg Keogh <[email protected]> wrote:
> Folks, I get the impression that the DataSet and its child classes classes > are falling out of favour, is that true? However, I personally find them to > be very convenient and full-featured for apps of all sizes (but I don’t > expose them to the outside world of course and my discussion here is only > about private use). What I like about DataView and DataRow are the huge > number of interfaces they support, and for me the most important features > are these:**** > > ** ** > > 1. When bound to a grid you get bi-directional sorting with no code at all. > **** > > 2. They supports SQL-like filter expressions (Foo Like '%bar%') AND (FooId > > 666) for example, and applying these filters is blazingly fast.**** > > 3. IEditableObject in DataRowView gives begin/end edit semantics.**** > > ** ** > > While coding lots of Entity Framework 4 over the last several weeks I often > have to materialize a collection of entities and send them up to the UI for > display in grids or pickers. The EF4 context only allows materializing T[] > arrays or List<T> of entities, and these are woeful compared to DataView and > DataRow, they don’t any of the three lovely features listed above.**** > > ** ** > > I have resorted to converting my EF4 query results from raw DbDataRecord > back to DataRow so I get all the functionality back. Why do I have to do > this workaround? Am I missing some other technique?**** > > ** ** > > Note, the entities and collections created by netTiers support all the > interfaces that the System.Data classes do, so it’s only after migrating to > EF4 that I’m hitting this irritation. It seems that I’m taking a step > backwards with EF4 entities and hence doing stupid workarounds like > converting to System.Data objects.**** > > ** ** > > I’m told there is an MSDN EF4 discussion group, so I’ll ask about this in > there once I find it and get in.**** > > ** ** > > Greg**** >
