Here is how I am doing it.

Robin Giltner

I didn't understand what Chan was getting at so I couldn't help but I certainly have an interest in Master/Detail and DevExpress so I was keen to see what you have done. I opened the project but it gave me an error (illegal form or some such thing). Paul would you be good enough just to post a screen shot of what the form looks like.

Cheers, Peter

I'm not sure why would have an issue unless maybe you have a different version of Dev Ex installed. maybe if you remove and re-add the dev ex references it will work.

Anyways what I did was create a class that inherits from dataset so I can then drag and drop business objects onto it and it adds them to the dataset so you end up with a typed datset with relations etc. So far it works well for me I am not doing any zillion recrods grids or reports so there could be some issues.

Now I have a typed data set in my toolbar that contains whatever business objects I dropped onto it. I can then drag and drop it onto a form or report and use it as a data source.

If I drop it on a form with a Dev Ex grd I can assign it as the data source

and datamember

The end result is a grid with master child navigation

or a report with child bands

Again, thanks for the very prompt response - much appreciated.

Cheers, Peter

I saw 7.2 and I thought our versions where the same but you are 7.2.2 while I'm still using 7.2.1. Anyway I can see things now and what you've done looks really good - I will certainly take a much closer look because the inbuilt Parent/Child stuff in DevExpress always seemed like a very clean UI to me. A couple of questions though:

1) When I look in the code I see only boCustomer is exposed. Could all the bo's be dropped on the form and everything would work ok?

2) In the screen shots I see the SF toolbar is on the form. Does that work ok in whatever grid view has focus?

3) I take it the general flow is the BOs are populated as normal and, within DataSetBase (very clever BTW), the relations are created (using info from the BOs) and the data loaded for use in the various grids. If this is so how do changes in DsCustomerOrders dataset make their way back into the BO's for saving to the database?

Cheers, Peter

Glad you figured out the versioning thing kinda thought it was something like that

I think all of your questions are things I have added after I posted the sample app, At first the basic idea was to be able to use the dataset class with Xtra Reports and for read-only master-Detail grids to allow a "drill down" capability. I was mainly interested in being able to have access to all the strong typed fields at design time because it makes report design alot easier and I was happy with that!

After having some issues with the business binding source I decided to try to make this dataset class stay in sync with the business objects (read-write),anyways I think I have it working for the most part but it may still be a little bit buggy I don't remember where I left off Friday but I'll try to post what I have so far  a bit later today if I can.

Paul

The project doesn't have the business objects that you are using in the dataset so I can't easily see what the issue is.

Are you saying the dataset does not show up on your toolbox?

Here are the steps that should make this work

Create a class that inherits from datasetbase

drop business objects on the new class

override relations if needed

Rebuild solution

should have new class in toolbox,

drag new class onto form or report from toolbox and set data source and member

Let's take the report approach as this will be what I believe everyone is trying to accomplish here.  We have a reporting assembly that has a data source for each report that we create.  Our base data source inherits off of the BusinessBindingSource, we also inherit the BO we plan to use off of the primary BO so that we can add any custom fields without making a mess of the original BO.

Does that allow you to do master detail binding?

In other words

Customer-->

                  Orders-->

                                 Order Items

This is what we do for all of our reporting and have some very deep and complex relationships and it has worked out great!

I got really busy yesterday so wasn't able to spend much time looking at this. Is there anyway you can create a sample of how to use the BBS to create a master detail grid?

I had some issues using the BBS as a binding source that was discussed in another thread. Ben gave me some good suggestions on how to get around the issues I faced but I ended up using this approach to grid binding as it meant I did not have to refactor and then retest quite a bit of logic.

Anyways it would be great to see an sample of how it would work using a BBS.

Paul

I got really busy yesterday so didn't have a chance to post this, this is an editable version of the data set class, basically what I am trying to do is to keep the business objects on the form in sync with the data tables in the data set. 

For the most part I think it will work ok but there still may be some gotcha's I haven't ran across. I also threw in a report so you can see how that works.

Anyways I hope this helps out anyone that is looking to do this sort of thing. 

I also am posting an infragistics 2007 volume1 version just cause it was easy enough to do .

Paul

I know you converted the code I did into C# so maybe something got messed up in the conversion?

The samples you sent earlier are not very helpful to me, can you try to replicate the project I created in VB using the strataframe sample database?

Paul

Have you embedded a Report Writer into your application to that users can create their own reports?  I am evaluating your recommendation for Report-Shooter now and look forward to your sample.  If you have any Report-Shooter samples that would help.

Richard

Yes. In fact, in our medical software we created an entire report template interface and we develop our reports through the VERY same engine that we make available to our end users.  Obviously there are certain features that they cannot access since we may want to restrict certain things, but the engine and editor is literally the same one for the end-user as it is for us.  This makes is VERY easy to copy over a report and make a few simple changes out in the field.

They can then click the Design template to modify the template.

We are planning on including a more robust sample in the next update.  But I have attached a very simple sample that I created for someone else that will at least give you a clue as to how to setup a data source and tie it into a report.  The one we will release will include more details as it relates to paret-child relationships, etc.

Thanks,

Richard

For now we are going to create a number of samples that show how to implement this type of logic into the application using SF through samples and some KB articles.