Sorry.  My communication skills do lack.  Getting what is in my brain onto paper has always been difficult.  I apologize in advance if I sound like I am repeating myself.

The grid is going to be read-only.  The user just wants to view the data (and I may whip out a report or two from the grid).  I am trying to get fields from three tables into one table-like presentation to the user.  Since the three BOs already exist, I was hoping to utilize some functionality there.  Since relations exist, couldn't I somehow derive a table from the three BOs and throw that into the grid?

Just exploring.

Dustin,

Much appreciated response!  I do not want to "complicate" things by adding custom properties to the first BO which reflect the already existing properties of the second and third BO.  I think that I may be trying to do something with business objects that they were not intended to do.  In other words, I cannot "query" (derive a table from) the business objects...I need to go back to the source DB for that.

Bill

Bill,



OK, so the BBS needs to have a strong typed property to work...didn't know that.



However, you might want to consider a ListView instead, since the data is readonly. In this case, you don't need strong typed properties, just columns in the underlying data table (they must be aliased in SQL though). You might have set up the population setting via code, but it works...I'm using heavily in a custom search form I use. In my case, I'm allowing the user to search on not just the base table, but also on values in a parent table and/or other FK tables. E.g. in your case, this would allow the user to search on unit description to retrieve a work order. I build the list view based on columns in the data table. You just need to alias all the columns in SQL. I don't think you can set this up via the designer, as it will only show you the strongly typed properties.



Of course, if you need to pump out reports, then you may be back to a grid....which means either adding the custom properties to the appropriate BO or creating a special BO based on a view. You may find that the custom properties are the way to go, as they might have other uses. If you use them, you'd just need to add these columns to your fill methods, then access the extra columns in you properties. There are lots of good posts on this out there.



Hope that helps!

Ok, what about using custum business binding sources to expose the children BOs themselves as properties on the parent BO? This is the same way we do reporting, and there is an example of how to set this up within the new StrataFlix sample that Trent just posted: http://forum.strataframe.net/Topic18186-17-1.aspx

Take a look at the Movie Profile Report under the StrataFlix.Reporting project.  The Movies BO has Images, Cast, and Items as children all declared as public properties. Notice that you are talking to the business binding source for each child BO rather than the BO itself. You aren't pulling in the individual fields into the parent BO (i.e. the solution I suggested earlier), but are instead exposing the children BOs themselves.

For a grandchild record, you would just go one level deeper and expose the grandchild BBS as a public property on the child BO.

Does that sound more like what you are looking for?

You will want to take Dustin's advice on this one.  This will give you what you are trying to accomplish.

It does.  I have downloaded the sample app and the newest posting of the framework.  I have 1.6.6, but it is not the most recent beta version.  As soon as I can get these things installed and built, I will review the sample app.  Hopefully, this will provide what I am looking for.

Thanks!
Bill

Error encountered:
A project with an Output Type of Class Library cannot be started directly.
In order to debug this project, add an executable project to this solution which references the library project.  Set the executable project as the startup project.

Solution: 
For some reason StrataFlix.Base was set as the startup project.  I changed it to StrataFlix (first project in the list) and everything worked after that.

Now, I will start digging into the custom BBS examples.

That is stored on a per machine basis as part of the solution.  This is just .NET.