The application that I am working right now has tons of typed datasets, but we are not using them!!!! We are still doing ds.tables(0).rows(0).item(0) type of thing!

These typed datasets got pulled into the project long time ago for some reason (before I got here) and now we cannot just remove them.

I should add that this application was creatd using a lot of the built-in/visual options that VS.NET uses for handling datasets. For example, the datasets were added to the forms visually (on that section at the bottom of the form) and that has caused some problems. Typed datasets seem to be heavy for VS.NET to handle. Opening a form with many of them (say 30) takes a loooong time at design time in VS.NET (not at runtime)

Another issue that they ran into with typed datasets was that when there were too many datasets (say 15) defined in a web service, the web service took a rather long time to instantiate. As it turned out, the web service was creating some .vb files to represent the type dataset at runtime on the very first hit. This creation took a long time when there were too many typed datasets. What they ended up doing was copying the datasets to the client application and set their "Custom Tool" property to "MSDataSetGenerator" and force VS.NET to generate the .vb files at design time rather than at runtime. This helped with performance but now we need to remember to keep in synch the datasets used in the web services with the client applications.

In summary typed datasets have been a pain in this application with little benefit, BUT a lot has to do with the way the application was designed/coded initially, not with the typed datasets themselves.

The application is a VB.NET application so casting is not really an issue for us, but I certainly wish we were doing a better use of them or just plain remove them from the project.





>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?
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>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.
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>I'd love to hear how you are using typed datasets if you are using them...
>
>+++ Rick ---