>>>I have been watching the Pluralsight Tutorials on ASP.NET MVC 3 and I am totally confused to the direction I want to following. It looks like (from the little I understood) that ASP.NET MVC 3 "suggesting" (or maybe even requires) to use the Entity Framework and LINQ. Of course I don't quite understand these technologies and also find them very complicated.
>>>
>>>A couple of years ago I created a small WinForms app using strongly typed dataset approach. It was slow to understand back then but it was less complicated (I think) and I had more control.
>>>
>>>So now I am not sure which direction I should follow when building a small ASP.NET application. The application (as the starting point) will be performing the following:
>>>
>>>1. Get a data set from the SQL Server database.
>>>2. Display the data in the grid view.
>>>3. Allow user to switch to a detailed view (where fields are in textbox controls).
>>>4. Allow user to make changes and save (when click on Save button) the changes to the database.
>>>
>>>Any suggestions to which approach you like? TIA.
>>
>>I'm going to muddy the waters a bit more :-}
>>
>>Bill *may* be right in that a SQL Dataset approach is simple - but EF should give you a much better object orientated solution.
>>
>>OTOH I don't agree with Craig that 'code first' or even, come to that, 'model first' is a good way to implement EF - it's OK for simple, one-off type applications but the limitations soon become clear in real world scenarios......
>
>Thank you for "muddying" the water :). I am exploring all options. Of course, I would like to learn the technology that will serve me in the long run. Ideally I wish .NET would have a VFP CursorAdapter approach (which I love) and that would be the best solution for me. But I know the .NET is still trying to catch up to the VFP <bg>.

SQLDataSource is close to VFP's cursoradapter.