Sorry, I cannot help you Rick with this problem as I have not yet experienced it. I am just stqrting with .NET and got a great "Hello World" program is you need it <bg>.

But as I was floundering thru the reams of code required to access and modify data it occured to me that VFP may be the answer. We can code a code generator in VFP which will spit out the .NET source code we need. VFP being Data Centric, understands data very well indeed, and can be used to create tools for .NET were .NET is very required laborious coding. Perhaps a generator to create the casting code you need for your tables would be a good start.

Glenn


>Hi all,
>
>I've been sitting on a fence here trying to figure whether I should use typed datasets or stick with untyped datasets. So far I've been using untyped datasets simply because I don't have to worry about keeping database and schemas in sync. And I'm getting real tired of having to explictly cast everything coming out of a DataRow <g>...
>
>What are other people doing?
>
>While I see the benefits in using typed datasets I just can't see how how to efficiently automate the process of keeping the XSD schemas and generated DataSets intact when data changes occur. Due to how my business objects work I would have a lot of separate XSD files (one for each business object and it's main table view).
>
>I also worry about app bloat and performance here. There's a lot of code that gets generated for typed datasets - a lot of it that gets loaded uselessly (for example all datatablews are created up front even if you never fill the table)... Typed Datasets are faster with accessing the data in a loop but otherwise there's a perf hit.
>
>I'd love to hear how you are using typed datasets if you are using them...
>
>+++ Rick ---