>>>>>>>>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.
>>>>
>>>>This is great. Thank you.
>>>
>>>Only great if you assume that mimicking a cursoradapter is the best way to go (g,d&r from VFPers)
>>
>>I am not giving up on EF, not at all. I will try to create a small (kind of "Hello World") example using EF too. I just don't want to go through the exercise of creating the entire program realizing later that the approach does not work for me.
>
>EF is useful if the scope of the application justifies the time to ramp up and implement it (learning the intricacies of LINQ among other things).
>
>For a fairly simple web app, EF just makes things far more complex than they need to be.
>
>KISS principle.

I agree with the KISS principle.