Typed DataSets in C#

DataSets are an important aspect of .NET development. There are many ways to create and access them. In this entry, I will go through the process of creating a DataSet visually and then access that DataSet programatically.To add a DataSet Right-Click on the project and select > Add > New Item

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Once in the DataSet designer, go to the DataSet Toolbox and drag over TableAdapter and setup your connection – in this case I am using Pubs.

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Save the connection string to the application configuration file

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Select [Use SQL statements] as the Command type

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Enter the SQL statement to be used for this dataset. In this case I am extracting just authors from CA.

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Generate Methods to Fill and Get a DataTable

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After the DataSet is built, it should look like the below in the designer.

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Once the dataset is created, it is accessible from the anywhere in the project. Below is how to interface with the dataset from a program.

First, a reference to the DataSet needs to be added to the Using section at the top. Intellisence should pick it up.

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The code below is used to access the dataset:

// Access Table Adapter
authorsTableAdapter ta = new authorsTableAdapter();

// Access Dataset
dsPubsCA.authorsDataTable dt = ta.GetData();

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To keep this program simple, I am only going to access the DataSet and cycle thru it — printing data to the console.

C# Program Listing

Results:

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As I said earlier, there are many ways t o create and access DataSets and this is just one of them. If you want code that is free of large SQL select commands, this is a way to cleanly access a Typed DataSet with just two lines of code.