Question

When I find a new idea, I always stick with it, and am unable to see any weak sides of it. Bad things happen when I start to use the new idea in a large project, and discover some moths later that the idea was extremely bad and I shouldn’t use it in any project.

That’s why, having a new idea and being ready to use it in a new large project, I need your opinion on it, especially negative one.

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For a long time, I was bored to type again and again or copy-paste the following blocks in projects where database must be accessed directly:

string connectionString = Settings.RetrieveConnectionString(Database.MainSqlDatabase);
using (SqlConnection sqlConnection = new SqlConnection(connectionString))
{
    sqlConnection.Open();

    using (SqlCommand getProductQuantities = new SqlCommand("select ProductId, AvailableQuantity from Shop.Product where ShopId = @shopId", sqlConnection))
    {
        getProductQuantities.Parameters.AddWithValue("@shopId", this.Shop.Id);
        using (SqlDataReader dataReader = getProductQuantities.ExecuteReader())
        {
            while (dataReader.Read())
            {
                yield return new Tuple<int, int>((int)dataReader["ProductId"], Convert.ToInt32(dataReader["AvailableQuantity"]));
            }
        }
    }
}

So I’ve done a small class which allows to write something like that to do the same thing as above:

IEnumerable<Tuple<int, int>> quantities = DataAccess<Tuple<int, int>>.ReadManyRows(
    "select ProductId, AvailableQuantity from Shop.Product where ShopId = @shopId",
    new Dictionary<string, object> { { "@shopId", this.Shop.Id } },
    new DataAccess<string>.Yield(
        dataReader =>
        {
            return new Tuple<int, int>(
                (int)dataReader["ProductId"],
                Convert.ToInt32(dataReader["AvailableQuantity"]);
        }));

The second approach is:

• Shorter to write,

• Easier to read (at least for me; some people may say that actually, it’s much less readable),

• Harder to make errors (for example in first case, I often forget to open the connection before using it, or I forget while block, etc.),

• Faster with the help of Intellisense,

• Much more condensed, especially for simple requests.

Example:

IEnumerable<string> productNames = DataAccess<string>.ReadManyRows(
    "select distinct ProductName from Shop.Product",
    new DataAccess<string>.Yield(dataReader => { return (string)dataReader["ProductName"]; }));

After implementing such thing with simple ExecuteNonQuery, ExecuteScalar and ReadManyRows and a generic DataAccess<T>.ReadManyRows in a small project, I was happy to see that the code is much shorter and easier to maintain.

I found only two drawbacks:

• Some modifications in requirements will require heavy code changes. For example, if there is a need to add transactions, it will be very easy to do with ordinary SqlCommand approach. If my approach is used instead, it will require to rewrite the whole project to use SqlCommands and transactions.

• Slight modifications on command level will require to move from my approach to standard SqlCommands. For example, when querying one row only, either DataAccess class must be extended to include this case, or the code must use directly SqlCommand with ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior.SingleRow) instead.

• There might be a small performance loss (I don’t have precise metrics yet).

What are the other weak points of this approach, especially for DataAccess<T>.ReadManyRows?

Answer 1

What you’re trying to accomplish is nice, I actually like this kind of syntax and I think it’s pretty flexible. However I believe you need to design you APIs better.

The code is readable and nearly beautiful but it is hard to understand, primarily due to lots of generics that don’t make much sense unless you know exactly what each type means. I’d use generic type inference wherever possible to eliminate some of them. To do so, consider using generic methods instead of generic types.

Some syntax suggestions (I don’t have compiler now so they are basically ideas):

Use anonymous types instead of dictionaries

It’s trivial to write a helper that converts anonymous type to a dictionary but I think it improves the notation greatly and you wouldn’t need to write new Dictionary<string, object>.

Use Tuple.Create

This static method was created to avoid specifying types explicitly.

Create a strong-typed wrapper around DataReader

This would remove those ugly conversions all around the place—and actually, do you really need access to DataReader in that lambda?

I will illustrate this by code for your examples.
Kudos to David Harkness for chaining idea.

var tuples = new DataAccess ("select ProductId, AvailableQuantity from Shop.Product where ShopId = @shopId")
    .With (new { shopId = this.Shop.Id }) // map parameters to values
    .ReadMany (row =>
         Tuple.Create (row.Value<int> ("ProductId"), row.Value<int> ("AvailableQuantity"))); 

var strings = new DataAccess ("select distinct ProductName from Shop.Product")
    .ReadMany (row => row.Value<string> ("ProductName")); 

I can also see it being extended for handling single row selection:

var productName = new DataAccess ("select ProductName from Shop.Product where ProductId = @productId")
    .With (new { productId = this.SelectedProductId }) // whatever
    .ReadOne (row => row.Value<string> ("ProductName")); 

This is a rough draft for Row class:

class Row {
    DataReader reader;

    public Row (DataReader reader)
    {
        this.reader = reader;
    }

    public T Value<T> (string column)
    {
        return (T) Convert.ChangeType (reader [column], typeof (T));
    }
}

It is to be instantiated inside ReadOne and ReadMany calls and provides convenient (and limited) access to underlying DataReader for selector lambdas.