My Daily Headache / dotNet 2.0 Web Services

Larry Collette — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 19:11:00 GMT

My Daily Headache / dotNet 2.0 Web Services

I have been developing with Visual Studio 2003 for a while and I recently convinced my company to purchase a MSDN Universal Subscription, which got me my hands on Visual Studio 2005. Granted I went to a few live events and already received a few copies of VS 2005 Beta 2, but never had the time to get around to testing, until now.

My current project is to build a smart client application using FW 2.0 and secured web services w/ WSE 3.0 to a PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) enabled web application using ASP.net 1.1.

The current snag I have gotten myself into is the use of the Web Reference in VS 2005. I have created a Web Service and Web Method to return the data when invoked. I have created two methods to run tests against.

[WebMethod]

public myData[] getMyDataObject(int UserID) {

return ConvertDataTableToObjectArray(new Procedures().getData(UserID));

}

[WebMethod]

public DataTable getMyDataTable(int UserID) {

return new Procedures().getData(UserID));

}

I test this web service on the localhost just to make sure the data is returned properly when Invoked.

Now, on my Windows Client Application, I create my form and add the web service as my reference. I create the object and binded it to the DataGridView control:

myData[] data = new myWebService.DemoData().getMyDataObject(Member.UserID);

dataGridView1.DataSource = data;

dataGridView1.Refresh();

Which works fine, but I needed to filter the data. Since this application was going to be a Smart Client, there wasn’t a point to keep going back and invoking the method, so I plan on caching the data or storing it locally in an xml until the client decides to update. The current method receives the top 100 in a parameterized stored procedure; therefore the client is receiving all their information.

So I run into the issue with filtering the data. Since I received the data as an object, I was in search of a class or method of the DataGridView control to filter and show what I need the client to see. The best method was the filter method in BindingSource class, after trying and trying, it seemed to not work and I have no clue why:

myData[] data = new myWebService.DemoData().getMyDataObject(Member.UserID);

BindingSource bs = new BindingSource();

bs.DataSource = data;

bs.Filter = String.Format(“ActiveDate = ‘{0}’”, SelectedActiveDate);

dataGridView1.DataSource = bs;

dataGridView1.Refresh();

Since this isn’t working, I tried to go back to trying the DataView, here is where I came to a problem:

DataView class, correct me if I am wrong, but this class allows you to customize data from a DataTable (and nothing else???)

So I tried invoking Method #2 in my Web Service:

DataTable data = new myWebService.DemoData().getMyDataTable(Member.UserID);

DataView dv = new DataView(data);

dv.RowFilter = String.Format(“ActiveDate = ‘{0}’”, SelectedActiveDate);

dataGridView1.DataSource = dv;

dataGridView1.Refresh();

This is where I have found out that when you reference a WebService, VS creates a Reference.map and creating a “GenericObjectDataSource” I know damn well that my “getMyDataTable()” web method is a datatable, why does VS create this custom generic data object that I cannot convert or cast to a DataTable??? The DataType name that is created is called getMyDataTableResponsegetMyDataTableResult.datasource. Once I set my object to this type, I just set the data source to it:

myWebService getMyDataTableResponsegetMyDataTableResult results =

new myWebService.DemoData().getMyDataTable(Member.UserID);

dataGridView1.DataSource = results;

dataGridView1.Refresh();

I am still without a filter and I am about to just make date filter for the stored procedure, which makes it pointless to save the data object locally, since now I have to keep recalling the database, regardless of changes.

I have been staring at this thing all day, perhaps I just need another set of eyes, but with being new at the changes of VS 2005 as well as being under the gun, I am clueless of what I should do next. What do you think or see????

Thanks for listening!

Larry

New place...

Larry Collette — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 17:06:00 GMT

It's been a while, but I have set up a new blog on geekwithblogs.net.

I haven't got around to getting my web server back online. The issue is that I never got around to updating my DSN.

Oh well.. this will do, I'm glad to be here.