T
Toby Groves
Hi, after a bit of advice here if possible.
I have an application which needs to store several different types of
"document". Each of these documents have many properties in common but
in addition will have some properties peculiar to themselves. In normal
class parlance, I'd have a base document class which implements the core
functionality and from this I'd derived a class for each type of
document which extends the base class.
The question is how do I go about persisting these documents to a
database, particularly in the ADO.NET world. Obviously each document
type will be stored in its own table which has columns to cater for all
the properties of that specific document type but I'm wondering what the
best way of organising the access to these tables is?
Can I implement any form of inheritance with typed DataSets in a similar
manner to classes, or do I have to implement a completely separate
DataSet for each document type, although much of the code would be
identical? Even if I can use some form of inheritance, would there be
any mileage in doing so and what advantages or disadvantages would it
convey?
Would I possibly be better off using the aforementioned class hierarchy,
loading the data from the database into instances of these classes and
then binding interface components to these objects or is this needlessly
complex? I'm a bit confused as to when to use business objects for
interface binding rather than DataSets but that's almost another
question.
If anyone can offer any advice in this area or better still, point me at
some reading material I can wade through I'd be most grateful.
I have an application which needs to store several different types of
"document". Each of these documents have many properties in common but
in addition will have some properties peculiar to themselves. In normal
class parlance, I'd have a base document class which implements the core
functionality and from this I'd derived a class for each type of
document which extends the base class.
The question is how do I go about persisting these documents to a
database, particularly in the ADO.NET world. Obviously each document
type will be stored in its own table which has columns to cater for all
the properties of that specific document type but I'm wondering what the
best way of organising the access to these tables is?
Can I implement any form of inheritance with typed DataSets in a similar
manner to classes, or do I have to implement a completely separate
DataSet for each document type, although much of the code would be
identical? Even if I can use some form of inheritance, would there be
any mileage in doing so and what advantages or disadvantages would it
convey?
Would I possibly be better off using the aforementioned class hierarchy,
loading the data from the database into instances of these classes and
then binding interface components to these objects or is this needlessly
complex? I'm a bit confused as to when to use business objects for
interface binding rather than DataSets but that's almost another
question.
If anyone can offer any advice in this area or better still, point me at
some reading material I can wade through I'd be most grateful.
(You could even use