Question

So today, I found some mysterious .NET architecture in the application I develop at work. I need help in understanding this architecture. The person who wrote it is long gone and I’m stuck to figure it out. We are creating an object in some code from some random workflow in the web application (unimportant for my question). The object is being instantiated from a class found in a Designer.vb file. I couldn’t initially see the file until I clicked the “show all files” in Solution Explorer in Visual Studio. There are 3 files linked together.. a *.xsd file, a *.Designer.vb file and a *.xsx file. The *.Designer.vb file looks to be auto-generated. Any guidance on how this architecture works and how I can change the SQL queries, would be appreciated.

Goal:
Get dbo.note.text from the dbo.note table column and place it in the dbo.exportnote.text column. I just don’t understand how it’s connecting to the database and getting the data from the dbo.note.text field. I want to make the query more specific (possibly put a where clause on it). But really I just want to understand how it’s communicating with the database. Most of the code uses stored procedures. So I’m confused on the architecture. What would be really cool is if you can explain how this code was autogenerated. It appears that the *.xsd file is an XML file when I “View in Browser” from the Solution Explorer.

Code to instantiate object of designer class:

Dim _TestResultsReportDataSet As New TestResultsReportDataSet

Image of Solution Explorer:

Snippet of partial class in designer:

       <Global.System.CodeDom.Compiler.GeneratedCodeAttribute("System.Data.Design.TypedDataSetGenerator", "2.0.0.0"),  _
 Global.System.Serializable(),  _
 Global.System.ComponentModel.DesignerCategoryAttribute("code"),  _
 Global.System.ComponentModel.ToolboxItem(true),  _
 Global.System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSchemaProviderAttribute("GetTypedDataSetSchema"),  _
 Global.System.Xml.Serialization.XmlRootAttribute("TestResultsReportDataSet"),  _
 Global.System.ComponentModel.Design.HelpKeywordAttribute("vs.data.DataSet")>  _     
Partial Public Class TestResultsReportDataSet 
    Inherits Global.System.Data.DataSet

Call #1:

Dim filterString As String = String.Format("TestResultsReportId = {0}", _testResultsReportRow.TestResultsReportId)
Dim _noteRow As TestResultsReportDataSet.NoteRow
For Each _noteRow In _testResultsReportDataSet.Note.Select(filterString)
    Dim _exportNote As New Exportnote(DataApplicationContext)
    CopyNoteRowToExportNote(_exportNote, _noteRow, exportTestResultReportId)
    _exportNote.Save()
Next

Call into “CopyNoteRowToExportNote”:

Public Sub CopyNoteRowToExportNote(ByVal _exportNote As Exportnote, _
                                   ByVal _NoteRow As TestResultsReportDataSet.NoteRow, _
                                   ByVal exportTestResultReportId As Integer)
    With _exportNote
        .Exporttestresultreport.SetId(exportTestResultReportId)
        .LabAccessioningNumber = _NoteRow.LabAccessioningNumber
        .Text = _NoteRow.Text
    End With
End Sub

… if you need more info, just ask

Answer 1

Strongly Typed DataSet was the answer. Although I still can’t figure out how or where the SQL table’s are mapped to a Strongly Typed DataSet DataTable created in the DataSet Designer when the DataTable is created manually, thus no TableAdaptor. That is one of my outstanding questions in my queue.