Manipulating data in sql / asp.net / c# - how?

Question

Not sure how to word the question...

Basically, so far all my SQL stuff has been stored procedures and dumped into a gridview. The odd case where I had to perform an action based on a value (such as highlighting a row green if a certain value was true) were done as the gridview was rendering in one of the overrides.

Now however I have to do something far more complicated - pull three sets of data down, run a series of checks on all three and some date related checks and stuff, then populate a gridview with some of the items.

In logic terms, I want to run three queries, and store the lists of results (presumably in Lists?) then run some logic, then populate the gridview.

Specifically what I don't know how to do is:

• Best way of pulling the data, and putting it into a List or other datastructure that lets me easily run through it, and retrieve data based on column (myList.age, or more likely, myList["Age"]).

• One I have compared the data, I assume I create a new list that will be put into the gridview... how do I put the contents of a list INTO a gridview? How would I add other stuff such as buttons or checkboxes at the same time?

Any nudge in the right direction would be appreciated! Particularly doing cool stuff with lists and sql (if there is anything cool you can do with them)

Answer 1

There are actually several ways to do this with .Net without using an ORM solution. Instead trying to list all of them here I will link you to an article series that should help you accomplish what you want. The following series of articles is about N-Layer design, and includes answers to the information you are looking for. The first set of 4 articles were created some time ago with ASP.Net 2.0 then the author updated them with an additional six articles using ASP.Net 3.5

http://imar.spaanjaars.com/QuickDocId.aspx?quickdoc=476

Answer 2

You can create datatables and populate them using the lists that you have generated and then bind your grid using the newly created tables as the datasource.

Answer 3

If you want to avoid having to write SQL query and concentrate on the data instead, go with the Entity Framework. It's quite well integrated with VS. It will connect to your SQL database, you will tell it which tables to import, and it will create a series of classes for you to talk to your database. Queries are quite easy to do, and they will return lists of objects which should be easy to manipulate and put to a grid later on.