Question

I’m using some stored procedures in an ASP.Net page. I often use either the row number or the name of the row between quotes, but I can’t find a way to access inner-joined tables by name:

    Dim conn As New SqlConnection("my_connection_string")
    Dim mycommand As New SqlCommand("last_played_songs", conn)
    mycommand.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure
    mycommand.Parameters.AddWithValue("@userid", userid)
    conn.Open()
    Dim dr As SqlDataReader = mycommand.ExecuteReader()
    While dr.Read()

        /* What I have: */
        Dim artist_image As String = dr(39) & "" & "/cover.jpg"      

        /* What I want. Let's say I called my table ArtistProfile under inner join: */
        Dim artist_image As String = dr("ArtistProfile.uniqueID") & "/cover.jpg"

   End While

It seems that using the name used with inner join is not the good syntax, but I can’t find how to name it in order to be able to access ‘inner-joined’ tables. The problem with numeric index is that if one of the 4-5 joined tables structure change, all indexes are changing.

Answer 1

Alias the field names in the stored procedure to get this desired output

select 
  TableA.Name as 'TableA.Name',
  TableA.Age as 'TableA.Age',
  TableB.Address as 'TableB.Address'
from
  TableA INNER JOIN TableB ON TableA.ID = TableB.ID

-- Example using table alias in SQL
select 
  a.Name as 'TableA.Name',
  a.Age as 'TableA.Age',
  b.Address as 'TableB.Address'
from
  TableA a INNER JOIN TableB b ON a.ID = b.ID

The default name of the column is the fieldname itself, so in your example it should be just dr(“uniqueID”)