Hi

I'm trying to build a report in an ASP.NET 2.0 application. I have 2 datasources that I am trying to combine (JOIN) to produce the rows for the report. One datasource is completely under my control in a local SQL Server 2005 database. The other is a ISAM data source accessed via a 3rd party ODBC driver over virtual connection. I have little or no control over this second source and am limited to read-only (not a problem for creating reports). Records in my SQL Server database may have a corresponding record in the ISAM database, and if so, I want to present columns from each in a homogenous report. So here's my question: is it better to use two DataTables, one for each datasource, and joined using a System.Data.DataRelation within ASP.NET, or better to use a linked server in SQL Server so that I can use a stored proc to perform a SQL JOIN on the data? I've tried a test using both and can't see much performance difference using WAS. I'm not very familiar with linked servers, so are there any pitfalls to look out for or obvious advantages with either approach?

Any help much appreciated.

Cheers
Mundo

I cannot help you much, but the drawback of using datarelation in your asp.net code is that if there is any redundancy in the column you take as primary key of primary table, it will give runtime error. Also, if foreign key contains some data which is not there in primary key of primary table, again runtime error will occur. If you use Join (either left join or inner join acording to requirement) in Stored procedure, this problem can be sorted out.

I dont know which has better performance and which is better.