When should you use the data control?

[jason1972]

Hi. I read an article where the author states that the best advice he can give regarding the data control is not to use it. I often encounter sentiment like this, with people saying that the data control has no place in professional applications. What do you people think? When is an appropriate time to use the data control? Or should professional programmers avoid it? Thanks.

[HunterMcCray]

Originally posted by jason1972
Hi. I read an article where the author states that the best advice he can give regarding the data control is not to use it. I often encounter sentiment like this, with people saying that the data control has no place in professional applications. What do you people think? When is an appropriate time to use the data control? Or should professional programmers avoid it? Thanks.


This is of course an opinion, but it is mine. A data control is an easy to use tool for Rapid Application Deployment and is fine for many small applications. Some programmers feel that using such tools breeds laziness, and some point out that you loose control over your application if you are not 100% in control of it. There is some wisdom to this in large scale apps. I think that the best advice would be to use it in Applications where Application speed and control of the data come in second to the speed of Application Deployment. I typically develop an App first using data controls and data bound objects to get the App up and running, I then typically go back and replace a lot of the data controls and data-bound controls with code based counter parts once I have the Application up and running. I do this because I like to get the feel of an app before I tweek it. Larger scale apps usually have very regimented requirements, and they do not want a mock-up of how it is going to look, they want the App finished ontime and at full speed, and from this point-of-view there is no need for data controls. Sorta like a moped...everyone likes to ride them, but nobody wants to be seen with one....

[PJB]

It Depends on what level your programming at, smaller desktop app's it's fine for, any Guru wil tell you to stay away from it because of the overhead, but if you aren't programming the next version of Windows then go for it, the overhead doesn't come into play until later, when you notice the App slowing down then think about hardcoding instead

I was thinking of buying a moped damnit

[Edited by PJB on 08-25-2000 at 10:23 PM]

[jason1972]

Thanks for your replies. I usually don't get to use the data control, since I try to use SQL statements and stored procedures to update the database (since everyone seems to agree that using cursors to update the database is not as efficient). There seems to be little advantage in using the data control when updates are done this way. I guess that leaves browsing applications as the only time when the data control becomes useful.

[Clunietp]

I think data controls are very useful for most small VB/Access apps (which usually are less than 10 concurrent users) and when you have to display a lot of fields on a form. Sometimes, manually coding the field editing and updating is not worth the time.

The data control also allows database development for database newbies. I know I started with the data control, and I think most VBers do the same.