Phone (520) 906-1592
Gary@DeanBlakely.com
Your browser is Unknown Version: 0.0 :(
Switch Theme:
Go To Table Maintenance Utility
One of the common needs of many corporate database centric ASP.Net applications is to provide the ability to add, delete, and modify rows and columns in various database tables. Providing this capability for a given table consists of dropping a datagrid or gridview control onto a page, and connecting it to a datasource with add, update, insert, and delete commands. (However the dataset designers in both VS2003 and VS2005 have serious bugs when it comes to generating good update SQL so the update SQL should be hand written.) Then creating a form containing all of the fields in the table with an “Add New Record” button. The last task is to write exception handling code. Typically this is a job that takes the better part of a day to program and completely test. 

After doing this about ten times I decided to develop a utility that would accomplish this for any table. Now when I have such a need, it’s a few minutes instead of a few hours to accomplish the table maintenance function.

This is a demonstration of an ASCX control that facilitates maintenance of most any database table. Although it is tested only with SQL Server it is architected to work with any database brand. It will soon be available for all of the commonly used database brands.

You will notice that the optional bottom panel shows the generated SQL so this can also be used as a SQL generator.

The coding required for a developer using this component to generate table maintenance capability is very little. [See the Code] The programmer simply has to pass a connection string, call an Initialization method, and maybe pass an arraylist to constrain the table choices offered.

There are some limitations to this utility because it operates over HTTP [See the limitations]. It is intended mainly for maintenance of control tables and small simple tables.

This demo rolls back all updates since it’s not wise to allow anonymous users on this website to modify tables. This is one of the options of the program and is usefull when testing a new page or using the utility to just show generated SQL.