[2005] Let user choose DB columns

Hi all.

I am building a datadriven application (without using the Visual Studios built in support for datasources ect). I add the constring ect manually. what I want to do is let the user choose which columns from a given table are displayed and in what order. I can currently think of a number of ways, however I was wondering if there are any more efficient solutions, heres the most usefull way i can think of.
Query the DB to get a list of column names for a table.
Let the user select the the column names from a list in a dialog type form which will save the results(drag from one list to another type deal, move up/down).
reconstruct the default select statement for this sql string.
eg:

Code:

---

Sub constructSQL(byval strTableName as string,byval fieldsToDisplay as list(of string))
    dim strSQL as string = "SELECT "
    for each s as string in feildsToDisplay
        strSQL &= s & ", "
    next
    'remove the last commer
    strSQL &= "FROM " & strTableName
end sub

---

This pseudo code also allows the user to reorder the columns, as the data is to be displayed in a list view and the listveiw gets its column headers via the column names from the datareader object. I also havent got to sorting yet, and was thinking that there might be a way to kill two birds with one stone.

Thanks in advance.

That pretty much the way you'd do it. You'll have to build each clause separately, e.g. WHERE and ORDER BY, and then put them all together.

Yeah, I get the where statement from a treeview nodes tag property or from a search, and I guess I could get the "order by" part of the clause from the listveiws column click event (the column headers text properties are column names).

Thanks...

You might wat to take a look at the Query Builder in VS for some ideas.