
Generate Strongly Typed DataSets #49
Chapter 6, Speed Hacks
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HACK
Let Visual Studio Help
Visual Studio provides a nice shortcut to creating your own strongly typed
DataSet objects. Follow these simple steps:
1. Open your Visual Studio Project (or create a new one).
2. Select the project in the Solution Explorer and click the Show All Files
button.
3. Right-click on the project in the Solution Explorer, click Add, and select
Add New Item.
4. In the Add New Item dialog box, select the DataSet template. In the
Name field, type the name of your DataSet (e.g., Customers.xsd) and
click Open.
You will see that the XSD file was added to your project. There are two
things to note here. First, right-click on the XSD file and select Properties.
This is where you can specify a custom tool to generate your strongly typed
DataSet objects. By default, the custom tool is named
MSDataSetGenerator,
which is provided out of the box by Visual Studio (see Figure 6-8).
The other thing to know is that the class file for the strongly typed DataSet
object was autogenerated for you. You can see it by turning on Show All
Files and expanding the XSD file. Figure 6-9 shows that the Customers.cs
class file was autogenerated to create a DataSet object of type Customers.
Using the xsd.exe Tool
The .NET Framework SDK includes a tool named xsd.exe that can be used
for a few different reasons; one of the handiest is for creating strongly ...