CHAPTER 22 ADO.NET PART II: THE DISCONNECTED LAYER
}
// Load DataSet from binary file.
fs = new FileStream("BinaryCars.bin", FileMode.Open);
DataSet data = (DataSet)bFormat.Deserialize(fs);
If you call this method from Main(), you can find the *.bin file in your bin\Debug folder. Figure 22-4
shows the contents of the BinaryCars.bin file.
Figure 22-4. A DataSet saved to a binary format
Source Code You can find the SimpleDataSet application under the Chapter 22 subdirectory.
Binding DataTable Objects to Windows Forms GUIs
So far, you have examined how to create, hydrate, and iterate over the contents of a DataSet object
manually using the inherit object model of ADO.NET. While understanding how to do so is quite
important, the .NET platform ships with numerous APIs that have the ability to bind data to user
interface elements automatically.
For example, the original GUI toolkit of .NET, Windows Forms, supplies a control named
DataGridView that includes the built-in ability to display the contents of a DataSet or DataTable object
using only a few lines of code. ASP.NET (.NET’s web development API) and the Windows Presentation
Foundation API (a supercharged GUI API introduced with .NET 3.0) also support the notion of data
binding. You will learn to bind data to WPF and ASP.NET GUI elements later in this book; however, in
this chapter, you will use Windows Forms because it is a fairly simple and straightforward programming
model.
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