From a professional pov, should i use tableadapters or classes?

IceThatJaw · March 10th, 2012, 04:56 PM

I am graduating with a CS degree this summer and I am aspiring to be a software engineer and/or software developer.

I am taking an independent study on asp.NET as my final class and I will be tasked to build an e-commerce site.

I really want to do this right. I am going to dedicate several weeks to creating several UML diagrams and really getting my design and documentation down pat.

The thing is, I have been using tableadapters for all my web projects so far and I think they are great. But I am really interested in Imar's N-layered architecture articles and I am strongly considereing taking this approach and building classes to access my data through.

In the real world, are tableadapters used frequently and if not, why? What are the advantages to coding all of the Data Access Layer logic manually using classes and such?

Thanks.

Imar · March 12th, 2012, 03:22 AM

Hi there,

Quote:

In the real world, are tableadapters used frequently and if not, why?

Yes, but in a lot of legacy applications. I don't use them for new sites anymore, and I thnk that's the common theme. They had their use back in the early days of .NET, but there are better alternatives now.

If I were you, I'd look at the Entity Framework, with optionally the Code First option. I am working on an update of my article series about N-Layer design using ASP.NET 4.5 where I'll use EF Code First as well. However, it may take a loooooong time before the series is done so don't wait for it......

Cheers,

Imar

IceThatJaw · March 12th, 2012, 10:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Imar

Hi there,

Yes, but in a lot of legacy applications. I don't use them for new sites anymore, and I thnk that's the common theme. They had their use back in the early days of .NET, but there are better alternatives now.

If I were you, I'd look at the Entity Framework, with optionally the Code First option. I am working on an update of my article series about N-Layer design using ASP.NET 4.5 where I'll use EF Code First as well. However, it may take a loooooong time before the series is done so don't wait for it......

Cheers,

Imar

Ok, this is great advice. Now the code first option in EF from what I understand is designed so that you can build your DAL without actually creating a database schema in a DBMS.

I'm still unclear on why that is so advantageous but I will try it out.

Thanks.

Imar · March 12th, 2012, 10:28 AM

Quote:

from what I understand is designed so that you can build your DAL without actually creating a database schema in a DBMS.

I'm still unclear on why that is so advantageous but I will try it out.

The biggest advantage is that you can design your model without having to think about the database. This means you can freely design your model with, for example, object inheritance and let EF handle the database generation for you. You still have a lot of control over how the database is generated though.

Alternatively, use EF Database First or Model First if you like these models better.

Cheers,

Imar