Here is a good example of when and how it should be used. One of the issues that you run into with a BrowseDialog is that is represents a single table in the database. However, there are times that you need to pull back a foreign key value, etc. Also, you don't really want to do this manually for each row through the RowPopulating event, as this would be slow and require the number of queries as you have rows. So in this example, I would want to create a view with all of my JOINs so a single query pulls back all of the information that I need.
Moreover, I want to be able to SEARCH on those foreign key values. Using a view I can make this happen. In our medical application all of our phone numbers are stored in a foreign key table, yet our users wanted to be able to search on the patient home phone. Well, this was not possible until this feature was added. I now have a view that brings back the patient record as well as the 3 different phone types, and I can then add these as search fields and search.
Using this example, here is the view. You will see that is strips out the dashes, parens, etc. since it will not be captured.
View Named PatientBrowse
SELECT
PT.*,
-- Get the top home phone
REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(COALESCE(
(
SELECT TOP 1
PN.ph_PhoneNumber
FROM PhoneNumbers AS PN
WHERE PN.ph_ParentType = 2 AND
PN.ph_pk_Parent = PT.pt_pk AND
PN.ph_PhoneType = 0
ORDER BY PN.ph_Rank
, ''),'(',''),')',''),'-',''),' ','') AS pt_HomePhoneBrowse,
-- Get the top work phone
REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(COALESCE(
(
SELECT TOP 1
PN.ph_PhoneNumber
FROM PhoneNumbers AS PN
WHERE PN.ph_ParentType = 2 AND
PN.ph_pk_Parent = PT.pt_pk AND
PN.ph_PhoneType = 1
ORDER BY PN.ph_Rank
, ''),'(',''),')',''),'-',''),' ','') AS pt_WorkPhoneBrowse,
-- Get the top mobile phone
REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(COALESCE(
(
SELECT TOP 1
PN.ph_PhoneNumber
FROM PhoneNumbers AS PN
WHERE PN.ph_ParentType = 2 AND
PN.ph_pk_Parent = PT.pt_pk AND
PN.ph_PhoneType = 4
ORDER BY PN.ph_Rank
, ''),'(',''),')',''),'-',''),' ','') AS pt_MobilePhoneBrowse
FROM Patients AS PT
This view is then tied to the BO as the overriding tablename:
I will also add the search fields even though they do not exist as part of the original table structure:
Now I can go and do a search and I will be able to search on these foreign key fields. For display purposes in the results, you can just pull back another field in the view that leaves the formatting...or add the formatting back in on the display. I recommend the 1st option as it requires far less work. Hope this helps!