Constraint Exception

[wes4dbt]

jmc,

There are people who don't like typed DataSets but, in my experience, they don't know how to use them properly

I totally agree. There's no "Magic". When you use a designer there is some underlying code added. Is it Magic when you add a TextBox to a form using the IDE. It's the same concept, code is created for you. I had some mishaps using the Datasource wizard but it was because I didn't understand what I was doing. Unlike Shaggy, the more I understand about ADO .Net the more I like Typed Datasets. For the types of things I do they are my goto choice. TableAdapters or DataAdapters is just a personal choice. No matter which one you choose, you have to know what your doing and understand how to use the objects.

[jmcilhinney]

Is it Magic when you add a TextBox to a form using the IDE.

I often use similar examples myself. I've seen many people recommend not using typed DataSets because you have more control if you write all your queries and ADO.NET code yourself. Why is having more control a selling point if you don't need more control? As someone who has used typed DataSets and written my own ADO.NET code in the past, I took advantage of the tools that VS provides when they were appropriate and did more by hand if and when it was advantageous to do so. To write more code in order to get more control that you don't need is not being productive.

There are people who don't like typed DataSets but, in my experience, they don't know how to use them properly.

I wanted to qualify this because I find that people sometimes like to read more into my comments than is actually there because I don't especially try to soften them. This was not intended to be a pejorative but merely a statement of fact. If people haven't used typed DataSets much then of course they won't know how to use them as well as someone who has. There's plenty of things that I don't know how to use properly. I've seen plenty of occasions where someone has recommended against using a typed DataSet because of some issue that isn't really an issue, but rather it's a situation that they know how to handle in raw ADO.NET because they have experience doing so but they don't have similar experience with a typed DataSet. I would count both Shaggy Hiker and Sitten Spynne amongst those who tend to suggest to people to write their own ADO.NET code but who both have openly admitted that they have limited experience with the alternative. As someone who has a reasonable amount of experience with both, I can say that both have their strengths and weaknesses and you shouldn't not use a typed DataSet in one situation that it is suited to simply because it's not suited to another situation that you don't currently find yourself in.