Cool Automated Command Builder for DataSet development

Please excuse my bit of self-indulgence here, but I am very excited that we are finally releasing our developer component for working with DataSets in .net. I know the C9 crowd is a discerning one, and I am looking for early feedback.

This tool allows you to fill/update/delete data using your typed dataset without having to write sql statements, or work with dataadapters at all. It was developed out of our own work with client's projects, so it has been proven as a time-saver for our team.

Anyhow, if you are interested take a look and let me know what you think:

http://forums.hydrussoftware.com/files/3/datasettoolkit/entry11.aspx

After using this it makes you wonder why MS didn't put this functionality into the .NET Framework itself!

Saves having to write a lot of code on your data access layer. Pretty slick.

One of the biggest headaches I've had writing data access code was maintaining it through the development cycle.  I'd find myself needing to add a column to a table, and I needed to:

1) Add the column in the database.
2) Add the column in the DataSet.
3) Include the column in my SELECT statements.
4) Include the column in my INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE statements.

With this tool, I added a column to the database and then the DataSet, and I didn't have to think about the other two.  Very cool.

As I said, you are a discerning audience. But, they are not canned spam. These are professional developers that I know have used the tool. Did I suggest they provide their comments here? yes.

Indeed, I've been living in the trenches of custom software development for years, and I've built several ASP.NET applications in that time.  I've built my own home-grown data access components, and I've used versions of this toolkit in a few applications.

All I can share is my direct experience, which is that I've saved many, many man-hours and headaches with this tool, and I think it will make other developers' lives easier as well. 

No SPAM friend - I had joined channel 9 when it was new, I vistit it often mostly watch the videos - I don't typically have time to chat it up in the forums. I don't recall what my old login was - so I created a new account.  Gabe19 told me he posted it about it and I came in to join the discussion.

I exist and have a blog (which I also posted about the DataSet Toolkit. Read it at http://choosing-a-blog-url-sucks.blogspot.com ... feel free to inspect the date-times on the blog, I didn't just create it after this post.

It's not advertisment - if you read the 1st post gabe19 asked for FEEDBACK on it. What do people think? Have you tried it? Does it suck? Is it useful? 

littleguru - HAVE YOU TRIED IT?

So if MS products are talked about in the C9 coffee-house, will you troll on those threads too, calling them advertisments?  Or will you end up trying Vista?

You keep using words like 'advertisement' and 'product placement' - I still fail to see how the original post fits that description.

Maybe the intent of this thread is for gabe19 to have a conversation with Microsoft (via C9) for feedback on the DataSet Toolkit built on .NET?  Perhaps it's not for you at all?!?

I dig your tool, li'l guru.  While I haven't had a chance to try to build an application against it, I did download and read about it, and I think one thing jumps out at me that differentiates the two tools.

The DST (DataSet Toolkit) uses a DataSet to infer the schema of your database.  The tables, columns, and relationships that you define there will be used to create SELECT statments to fill your tables (or just generate DataReaders) and INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE statements to update them from the DataSet.  Once you define the structure of your DataSet, you don't need to supply any additional information for it to do its thing.

From what I can see in your ORM tool, it assumes that you're using custom data-state objects, and it relies on class/property attributes to infer information about your database schema.  If you want custom data-state objects, that's great, but if you are using a DataSet, I'm not sure I see (yet) if the tool would be helpful.

I know that there's an age-old debate about whether to use DataSets or custom data-state classes, and I'm not interested in reviving that here.  But I do think that if you have a DataSet in your application, the DST will help you a ton.  If you don't have a DataSet, then, well, maybe you should drop your objects and get one.

OK, OK, that last bit was shameless...

Well, that IS a valid point - if everyone did that, sure - that would probably make C9 a bit lame...

So to not make this painful TANGENT last any longer and i'd MUCH rather talk about programming - are you at least going to give gabe19 some feedback about the DataSet Toolkit?