Question

What I want to do is basically have a column that ranks the users so if there were 10 people it would rank the person with the highest sales 10 and the second highest 9 and so on. Theres not always going to be 10 employees

I am using a stored procedure along with a sqldatasource to connect to my stored procedure.
To get all the data for each agent, then I am using functions like

 Dim TotalSales As Decimal = 0.0
    Function GetTotalSales(ByVal Price As Decimal) As Decimal
        TotalSales += Price
        Return Price
    End Function
    Function GetTotal() As Decimal
        Return TotalSales
    End Function


    Dim TotalCalls As Decimal = 0.0
    Function GetCalls(ByVal calls As Decimal) As Decimal
        TotalCalls += calls
        Return calls
    End Function
    Function GetTotalCalls() As Decimal
        Return TotalCalls
    End Function

to get running totals

could i do something like

Dim salesrank As Decimal = 0.0
    Function Getsalesrank(ByVal salestorank As Decimal) As Decimal
        Dim rank As New ArrayList
        rank.Add(salestorank)



    End Function

and then some how sort the array list and print the index of the agents sales total?

Answer 1

Since you’re using .Net 2.0 and apparently not adverse to using the built-in classes to accomplish data calls, I would recommend you switch from using the SQLDataSource to a strongly typed DataSet (.xsd file). You can create a typed DataTable and TableAdapter that will perform your initial queries and produce collection objects (tables) that can hold the data you need while you do other things to it. Once you have your dataset created you can call it simply by:

Dim connectionObject as System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection = _
    New System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection("Put your string here")

Dim myAdapter as MyStronglyTypedTableAdapter
Dim myTable as MyStronglyTypedTable

myAdapter.Connection = connectionObject
myTable = myAdapter.GetData()

If you create your DataTable so that it holds an empty column called TotalSales (I’m assuming the data table is holding data indexed by users), you can populate that column using your total sales method. Once you have the table organized by user you can use the table’s DefaultView to sort and bind to your GridView:

Dim myView as DataView = myTable.DefaultView
myView.Sort = "TotalSales ASC"
myGridView.DataSource = myView
myGridView.DataBind()

When this is done you can manipulate one of the columns of your GridView to display the numeric ranking. This would be done in the RowDataBound event.