Hmmn...I've been playing around with the objectDataSource as well (see my blog entry on <a href="http://codebehind.blogspot.com/2004/09/aspnet-20-exploring-objectdatasource.html">codeBehind.blogspot.com</a> . I tried using the objectDataSource with my existing business object library written in c# v1.1. The "Configure Data Source" wizard was empty, but that may be because none of my classes return DataSets (My classes return collections of strongly typed objects) I was able to manually bind my objects to the GridView with very little effort, which was cool.

In a recent MSDN Event I attended, I was shown how the GridView and DetailView controls can automatically write back the database using the dataSource controls, so I was hoping the same would be true for the objectDataSource. To an extent this is true, but they expect your objects to accept a single insert or update statement with all of the arguements passed in as parameters. Since writing my blog, I've discovered a few MSDN articles on the subject:

<a href="http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dv_aspnetcon/html/45fb67ee-9be7-49b7-9421-e242203dafa4.asp">Using Parameters with the objectDataSource Control</a>

and

<a href="http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpref/html/T_System_Web_UI_WebControls_ObjectDataSourceMethodEventArgs.asp">object DataSourceMethodEventsArgs</a>

These two articles provide a couple alternative routes. In the first, they claim that you can use a method that takes in an object as a single parameter, using a Model-View-Controller paradigm. This would be a useful feature.

The second article discusses capturing the parameter insert event, and manually mapping the parameters back to the object. Since the main reason I would use the gridView + objectDataSource controls would be to save time, I assumed this type of mapping should take place automatically. I wouldn't want to embed this type of logic in my web pages. Basically, I just want the objectDataSource to be able to automatically use the publically exposed properties to perform the update.

I may look into creating a wrapper class containing the objectDataSource and gridView controls to see if I can create an object that automatically performs the mappings when capturing the parameter insert event.

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