Virtuoso ADO.Net Data Grid Form Application

Introduction

This article details the steps required to create a simple Visual Studio 2008 Windows Form application with associated DataGridView control for displaying data in selected tables from a Virtuoso database.

Pre-requisites

1. Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SP1, which includes the ADO.NET Entity Framework runtime and associated tools
2. A running Virtuoso Universal Server instance

Steps

1. Launch the Visual Studio 2008 SP1 IDE.
   
   
   
   
2. Create a Web Application project by going to the File menu in Visual Studio and choosing New Project.
   
   
3. When the New Project window appears, choose either Visual Basic or Visual C# as the programming language.
   
   
4. Within the language category, click on Windows and select Windows Form Application from the right-hand panel.
   
   
5. Choose a name for the project, for example VirtuosoDataGridApp, and click OK.
   
   
   
   
6. From the Data, menu select the Show Data Sources menu item to display a list of available Data sources.
   
   
   
   
7. Click on the Add New Data Source link to add a new data source.
   
   
   
   
8. In the Data Source Configuration Wizard dialog Choose Data Source Type page, select the Database data source type and click Next.
   
   
   
   
9. In the Data Source Configuration Wizard dialog Choose your Data Connection page, select the New Connection button.
   
   
   
   
10. In the Choose Data Source dialog, select OpenLink Virtuoso Data Source from the list and click Continue.
    
    
    
    
11. In the Add Connection dialog, specify the hostname, portno, username, and password for the target Virtuoso Server and and check the Save Password check box.
    
    
    
    
12. Select the Select Database From List radio button and choose Demo from the drop down list, assuming the Virtuoso Demo Database is installed.
    
    
    
    
13. Click the Test Connection button to verify the connection is successful and then click OK to add the connection.
    
    
    
    
    
14. Select the Yes, include sensitive data in the connect string radio button and click Next to continue.
    
    
    
    
15. In the Choose your Database Objects dialog select the table and columns to be queried, the shippers table is used in this example.
    
    
    
    
16. A DataSet for the shippers database object is created
    
    
    
    
17. From the drop down list box next to the Shippers table ensure the DataGridView item is selected
    
    
    
    
18. Drag the Shippers DataSet item onto the Form to create a scrollable and editable association of the Shippers table object with the Data Grid View automatically.
    
    
    
    
19. From the Debug Menu select the Start Debugging menu item to run the application.
    
    
    
    
20. The data in the Shippers table will be displayed in the DataGrid application created.
    
    
    
    
21. A new row can be inserted (updated or deleted) as indicated for the new DHL record inserted below and the save button clicked to save the change to the database.
    
    
    
    
22. The Virtuoso Interactive SQL tab of the Conductor can be used to run the query select * from Demo..Shippers.
    
    
    
    
23. To verify the change has been successfully made in the database.
    
    
    
    

The task is now complete.