The BOs are defined.  Relations exist.  The user wants a form that simply displays data from the BOs.  For example:

Work Order BO
workorderindex (pk)
workorderid
partindex (fk)

Parts BO
partindex (pk)
partnum
unitindex (fk)

Units BO
unitindex (pk)
unitdesc

The grid will display workorderid, partnum, unitdesc.  With only the BOs, their corresponding BBSs and a DevEx Grid, can this be done?  If so, how?

I can easily get the Work Order BO and the Parts BO to display everything I need (employing the appropriate repository controls in the grid).  The Units BO is the kicker.

Hoping someone in the SF community will have run into this issue and will be able to shine some light on this.  Please note that I do not want to resort to SQL script here.  I can certainly create a data query and pass the results to the grid and bypass the BOs altogether.  That is not what I want to do.  I have some custom properties that are showing up in the grid from the Work Order BO that I must have.  These will be lost if I bypass the BOs.

Thanks,
Bill

Bill,



If I understand you correctly, you could write a fill method in your Work Order BO that would return the appropriate data (using the appropriate SQL joins to the other tables). The data table under BO can have any column in it (i.e. there doesn't have to a strongly typed property associated with each column), to the extra data would be available in the underlying datatable. You would then have your custom properties. I'm a bit slow to make use of grids, so I'm not sure how the BBS works with a datatable like this, but if the BBS is just binding to the data table, I'd guess that it would work just fine.



Hope that sparks some ideas.

So, I could write something like FillDataTable("SELECT WO.*, Parts.partnum, Units.unitdesc FROM WorkOrders WO LEFT OUTER JOIN...") and these two fields will show up in the BBS?  Is that right?  If so...my problem might be solved.

Testing now.

That does not work.  The fields come back with blank stares.  Kinda creepy.

As I understand it, the BO must have the field defined in order for the BBS to pick it up.  It has to be a part of the CurrentDataTable of the BO.  That is why I really want to see if this can be down only using currently defined BOs.  All of the data I need already exists in these separate BO definitions.  They can be instantiated and filled quite quickly.  Somehow, I should be able to relate the BOs and point to the field I want to display in the grid.  Somehow.

I really do not want to create a custom property in the Work Order BO called UnitDesc.  I shudder just thinking about that.

Thanks for the help!
Bill