Hi All,

I'm new to asp.net 3.5 using VWD. In the main I'm finding it excellent but one things is causing a lot of frustration with me.

I'm using Linq and whenever I change something that reconfigures the datacontext I'm having great difficulty getting the rest of the project in synch with the changes. The other day I changes the name of fieds in my database from ProjectNumber to ProjectNo simply for reasons of consistancy. I then spent a couple of hours trying to get my project to recognise the change. Eventually I had to re-create every form that used ProjectNumber to now use ProjectNo. Today I have added a temp table to the datacontext called 'Main' and now even though the project recognises the new table when I come to run, I get the error 'Main is not part of DataContextDataClasses.' I close the project and its staring right back at me in the middle of the datacontext.

Does anyone have any thoughts? Surely I dont have to go thru this every time I make a simple change? Is there a simple way of getting VWD in synch with itself? I welcome your replies.

Hi there,

You could look at refactoring tools such as Resharper from JetBrains or Refactor! from Dev Express as these tools enable you rename something logically throughout a project. A few downsides: won't work with Express, they are commercial products, and they may not work directly with L2S diagrams (although you can rename your column through code first to update all references, and then manually update just the diagram).

You can also use Visual Studio's Refactor command. Right click the property name in some code block (e.g. where you're using something like myProduct.ProductNumber right-click on ProductNumber) and then choose Refactor | Rename. This will rename all occurrences for that class *except* the one in the .dbml file which you need to update manually. Not sure if this command is available in the Express edition.

Finally, you could have used Search and Replace. For something like ProductNumber this would have worked fine I think. But yes, you still need to be careful and make sure you're not renaming the wrong things. Once you get a bit more experienced in this renaming, you'll be able to do it in minutes, rather than hours.

Cheers,

Imar

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Imar Spaanjaars
http://Imar.Spaanjaars.Com
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Author of Beginning ASP.NET 4.5 : in C# and VB, Beginning ASP.NET Web Pages with WebMatrix
and Beginning ASP.NET 4 : in C# and VB.
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Thanks for the reply