Lab 1: Creating a Data-Bound Windows Form in Visual Studio .NET

Print QR Code ISO/IEC18004 in Visual Studio .NET Lab 1: Creating a Data-Bound Windows Form

Let s now create a Windows application and demonstrate creating a data source and binding controls to data by dragging and dropping items from the Data Sources window. 1. Create a Windows application and name it DataSourcesWizardExample. 2. Start the Data Source Configuration Wizard by selecting Add New Data Source from the Data menu. 3. On the Choose a Data Source Type page, leave the default selection of Database and click Next. 4. On the Choose Your Data Connection page, select a connection to the Northwind sample database or create a new connection if needed. 5. Click Next, keeping the default values until you get to the Choose Your Database Objects page, and select the following from the Tables node:

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6. Click Finish to add the dataset to your project. 7. On the Data menu, select Show Data Sources to display the Data Sources window. The Data Sources window should appear similar to Figure 8-1.

Figure 8-1 Data Sources window displaying the Customers, Orders, and Order Details tables from the NorthwindDataSet

8. Drag the Customers node from the Data Sources window onto Form1. A DataGridView and BindingNavigator are added to the form, and several datarelated objects appear in the component tray, as shown in Figure 8-2.

Figure 8-2 Form1 and additional components after dragging Customers node from the Data Sources window

9. Run the application. At this point, you have a working application with a DataGridView data-bound to the Customers table. If you switch to code view in the Integrated Development Environment (IDE), you can see that code has been added to fill the Customers table with data in the form load event, and code has been added to the save but

The running application should display the Customers data as shown in Figure 8-3.

Figure 8-3

10. Stop the application and open the form in Design view. 11. Expand the Customers node in the Data Sources window. 12. Drag the Orders node (nested within the Customers node) onto the form. Notice the OrdersBindingSource and OrdersTableAdapter added to the component tray. 13. Run the application. Click a row in the Customers table. Notice that the Orders DataGridView displays all orders for the selected customer, as shown in Figure 8-4.

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Figure 8-4

Populate the Data Sources window by running the Data Source Configuration Wizard. Drag items from the Data Sources window to create data-bound controls on a form. Code to fill the table with data and to save changes back to the database is auto matically added to the form. In the Data Sources window, related records are displayed as nested nodes in the tree view.

The following questions are intended to reinforce key information presented in this lesson. The questions are also available on the companion CD if you prefer to review them in electronic form.

Answers to these questions and explanations of why each choice is right or wrong are located in the Answers section at the end of the book.

1. How do you add items to the Data Sources window (Choose all that apply.) A. Select Add New Data Source from the Data Sources window. B. Drag a DataSet from the Toolbox onto a form. C. Select Add New Data Source from the Data menu. D. Run the Data Source Configuration Wizard. 2. How do you create data-bound controls on a Windows Form A. Drag items from Server Explorer onto the Dataset Designer. B. Drag items from the Data Sources window onto a form. C. Drag items from the Toolbox onto a form. D. Set data related Form properties in the Properties window. 3. How do you bind controls to display data from related tables on a Windows Form A. By selecting the main node of the related table in the Data Sources window and dragging it onto a form B. By selecting the child node in the Data Sources window and dragging it onto a form C. By dragging a Relation object onto the Dataset Designer D. By binding to the child DataTable in the DataSet