Shaykat,

How about for DataSets, have it show the tables (the table name, and then the table object itself), then then when you drill down to a table, you get the rows in the table. If you open up the row in the table, you get the column values, like a key value pair for a hashtable.

- Nick

Yep, we know this is a pain point for customers, and we're thinking of a solution for this in the future...

Better handling of really long strings would be nice.

Good point about the strings, definitely something we are thinking about improving in the future. Actually you should be able to see a little drop down box in tech preview bits of Whidbey that allows you to use a new viewer to see large strings.

I just checked it out. Very nice. Any plans to allow editing in the string debug viewer?

Editing the string viewer is something we are looking into.

For really complex data you could provide separate dialogs to handle it. I certainly second the motion that DataSets should be more easily viewed during debuggin but it seems like the locals window is too small. What if you could right-click a DataSet and select "View in separate window" or something that would bring it up in a grid?

I'd also like to see that for 2D arrays and jagged arrays. Quite often I want to compare values between rows in an array but with the current method it's hard to get a grasp of the variation between rows.

My pie-in-the-sky idea - one that I've considered writing as an add-in just to have it...
Graph/chart view of arrays that updates live as you step through the code. When doing heavy mathematic work it would be excelent to be able to view a grid or line chart of the data. Obviously it would have to be fairly simple graphing to be accesible but even simple graphs are better than none at all.

I agree with others who suggest that debugging DataSets can be a real pain. For me, it leads to two questions:

1. Is this something that will be resolved by the "visualizations" in VS.NET 2005?

2. Is it possible with 2003 to hack together a generic dataset "viewer" (as an add-in or something along those lines) that can be used during debugging? Currently, I just use WriteXml() to send the data out to a file that can be examined in XmlSpy.

Actually, the dataset solution is something we are looking to solve with visualizers in Whidbey.
Yes it is possible to do what you mention with an add in. I saw an example somewhere - I'll try to find it.

Steve- you should check out the Whidbey beta - what you suggest for the dataset is basically where we are going. Your other ideas are great - in Whidbey you should be able to use the concept of visualizers to implement them.

I'm feeling the need to shamelessly promote here. :0) I'm a PM on the Debugger team - this topic is very much my area. in VS2005, visualizers will be able to solve the dataset and long string problem. Second, if you want a string visualizer you can use to edit the string, write it yourself! We are thinking about adding this capability to our built-in visualizer, but you very much have the ability to do this using the extensible framework. I have a how-to up on my blog right now...