Kevin, I "get" the partial classes, just as I "get" the concept of space travel. I'm just trying to establish whether it is more accessible in real life than space travel. ;-)

The answer "it depends" is a concern. From a purely planning viewpoint, managing typed datasets in a large, complex system or against a database controlled by some other party seems to carry risk.

Re builders- I'm imagining you'd want some sort of builder but "roll your own"? And as soon as you start doing anything more complex than a bog-standard single table, the builder scenario starts to look shaky.

IOW it seems to me that typed datasets are an island of expertise/power that deliver powerful benefits quickly, but may not translate very well. I thought the same about traditional dbf development using SEEK and SCAN rather than Views fwiw, and there are heaps of developers out there doing well with dbfs 10 years later, so who can say? It's a big, wide market out there.