The question here is about using nested GridViews or to "pre-assemble" the data from two tables using an SQL UNION in order to display it with a single GridView so that it appears as shown on the image below.
I am working on an ASP.Net project for which I am developing a form to match data between tables in two databases (Well the tables could be in the same database, and it would not make much of a difference). I have an SQL stored procedure that pre-calculates possible matches. The form I am developing will display these possible matches to the user who will then decide which row in one database corresponds to what row in the other database. The matching is done based on data resemblance.
It will look like this:
The Search box is for retrieving a match by hand, if this is necessary. The Action column will contain buttons to perform the matching. But here, we don't need to care about these.
Of course, I could use nested GridViews or nested Repeaters to achieve this, but is it the proper way of doing this? It would mean to issue one query to the database to retrieve rows from database DB1 and then to issue one query to database DB2 for each row in DB1. Typically, there will be hundreds or thousands of rows in DB1; let's say up to 2000. Also, some people recommend using Repeaters over GridViews, but what if paging is required on the main data source (DB1 in my case)?
Since the information in DB1 and DB2 is similar, I thought I could use a UNION query to merge data from DB1 and DB2. I am able to do that, except I don't know then how I can do paging using this method. Using paging with this scenario, I risk having some DB2 matches for one DB1 entry split over two pages, and I want to avoid this.
Related
I have this application, where there is a parent child table, and customers can order products. The whole structure is quite complex to post here but suffice to say, there is one Order table and one OrderDetails table for storing the orders. Currently what we are doing is INSERT one record in Order table, and then for each item the customer added, insert each item in a loop to OrderDetails table. The solution is not scalable for obvious reasons. It works fine for 100 or so items, but if user goes over 1000 items, or 1000 qty of a item or so, one can start to notice the unresponsiveness of the application.
There are a couple of solutions that come to mind, but I am not sure which one would scale well. One is I use BulkInsert from my asp.net application to insert into the OrderDetails table. Second is I generate XML and then pass that to a sql proc and extract / insert data into OrderDetails table from that XML, but that have associate overhead of memory consumption of the XML generated. I know I could benchmark and see for myself what would suit best for my application, but I would like to know what is the most common strategy and would scale better when compared to other. Also, if there is another technique that I could use instead of these two, that would be better performance wise ( I know performance is subjective word, but let me narrow it down to speed ) I could use that. Which is generally used the most? What do you use in your application?
You could consider exploring the option of using a table valued parameter in the database. You will have to create a table type object, whose structure will mimic that of the OrderDetails table. The stored proc for inserting the data will accept an input parameter of this type (such parameters are always READONLY).
In your server side code, you can construct a DataTable object containing all the Order Details data, which will be mapped to the input parameter of the stored proc. Ensure that the order of columns in the DataTable object exactly matches the order in the table valued parameter. Upon executing the query, all the data will be inserted in one shot. This will save you from looping for each row of data that is there, and will also prevent the overhead of XML parsing. This approach though will involve passing an entire object over the network.
You can read more about it here : MSDN Table Valued Parameters
1000 items for an order does seem quite excessive!
Would it be feasible to introduce a limit of 100 items per order into the business logic of the application?
I have a DataGrid I'm binding to a DataTable, and displaying three BoundColumns as a result.
I would like to have a fourth column that connects with different data-- for instance, if column #3 in the DataGrid is a UserID, I would like to use that to query against a database and retrieve the user's first name, and display it in the fourth column.
Are there any recommended approaches to this? I'm not a DataGrid expert but should I be looking at a TemplateColumn or something along those lines?
Which event should I hook all this querying to, OnItemDataBound?
The recommended approach is return the user's first name as part of the original query and just use a BoundColumn. If you need to modify data before displaying, then yes you can use a TemplateColumn and the OnItemDataBound event to manipulate your data.
Running queries OnItemDataBound is not something I would ever encourage. So if your grid will show 100 records at once, you want to run 100 extra queries per page load? This is something that if you implement, could possibly run within reason during testing. Once under load though, you'll see have hundreds of extra queries running isn't a good idea... it can just be solved by fixing the original query or maybe making a denormalized table depending on your DB structure and the complexity of your query.
When I ran into similar issue, I went the denormalized table route.
Use a join in your sql statement to get the other value.
I am using sqlite3 (maybe sqlite4 in the future) and I need something like dynamic tables.
I have many tables with the same format: values_2012_12_27, values_2012_12_28, ... (number of tables is dynamic) and I want to select dynamically the table that receives some data.
I am using _sqlite3_prepare with INSERT INTO ? VALUES(?,?,?). Ofcourse this fails to compile (syntax error near ?). There is a nice and simple way to do this in sqlite ?
Thanks
Using SQL parameters is not possible for identifiers such as table or column names.
If you don't want to keep so many prepared statements around, just prepare them on the fly whenever you need one.
If your database were properly normalized, you would have a single big values table with an extra date column.
This organization is usually to be preferred, unless you have measured both and found that the better performance (if it actually exists) outweighs the overhead of managing multiple tables.
I have an ASP.NET data entry application that is used by multiple clients. The application consists of multiple data entry modules that are common to all clients.
I now have multiple clients that want their own custom module added which will typically consist of a dozen or so data points. Some values will be text, others numeric, some will be dropdown selections, etc.
I'm in need of suggestions for handling the data model for this. I have two thoughts on how to handle. First would be to create a new table for each new module for each client. This is pretty clean but I don't particular like it. My other thought is to have one table with columns for each custom data point for each client. This table would end up with a lot of columns and a lot of NULL values. I don't really like either solution and suspect there's a better way to do this, so any feedback you have will be appreciated.
I'm using SQL Server 2008.
As always with these questions, "it depends".
The dreaded key-value table.
This approach relies on a table which lists the fields and their values as individual records.
CustomFields(clientId int, fieldName sysname, fieldValue varbinary)
Benefits:
Infinitely flexible
Easy to implement
Easy to index
non existing values take no space
Disadvantage:
Showing a list of all records with complete field list is a very dirty query
The Microsoft way
The Microsoft way of this kind of problem is "sparse columns" (introduced in SQL 2008)
Benefits:
Blessed by the people who design SQL Server
records can be queried without having to apply fancy pivots
Fields without data don't take space on disk
Disadvantage:
Many technical restrictions
a new field requires DML
The xml tax
You can add an xml field to the table which will be used to store all the "extra" fields.
Benefits:
unlimited flexibility
can be indexed
storage efficient (when it fits in a page)
With some xpath gymnastics the fields can be included in a flat recordset.
schema can be enforced with schema collections
Disadvantages:
not clearly visible what's in the field
xquery support in SQL Server has gaps which makes getting your data a real nightmare sometimes
There are maybe more solutions, but to me these are the main contenders. Which one to choose:
key-value seems appropriate when the number of extra fields is limited. (say no more than 10-20 or so)
Sparse columns is more suitable for data with many properties which are filled out infrequent. Sounds more appropriate when you can have many extra fields
xml column is very flexible, but a pain to query. Appropriate for solutions that write rarely and query rarely. ie: don't run aggregates etc on the data stored in this field.
I'd suggest you go with the first option you described. I wouldn't over think it. The second option you outlined would be a bad idea in my opinion.
If there are fields common to all the modules you're adding to the system you should consider keeping those in a single table then have other tables with the fields specific to a particular module related back to the primary key in the common table. This is basically table inheritance (http://www.sqlteam.com/article/implementing-table-inheritance-in-sql-server) and will centralize the common module data and make it easier to query across modules.
Not sure how to word the question...
Basically, so far all my SQL stuff has been stored procedures and dumped into a gridview. The odd case where I had to perform an action based on a value (such as highlighting a row green if a certain value was true) were done as the gridview was rendering in one of the overrides.
Now however I have to do something far more complicated - pull three sets of data down, run a series of checks on all three and some date related checks and stuff, then populate a gridview with some of the items.
In logic terms, I want to run three queries, and store the lists of results (presumably in Lists?) then run some logic, then populate the gridview.
Specifically what I don't know how to do is:
Best way of pulling the data, and putting it into a List or other datastructure that lets me easily run through it, and retrieve data based on column (myList.age, or more likely, myList["Age"]).
One I have compared the data, I assume I create a new list that will be put into the gridview... how do I put the contents of a list INTO a gridview? How would I add other stuff such as buttons or checkboxes at the same time?
Any nudge in the right direction would be appreciated! Particularly doing cool stuff with lists and sql (if there is anything cool you can do with them)
There are actually several ways to do this with .Net without using an ORM solution. Instead trying to list all of them here I will link you to an article series that should help you accomplish what you want. The following series of articles is about N-Layer design, and includes answers to the information you are looking for. The first set of 4 articles were created some time ago with ASP.Net 2.0 then the author updated them with an additional six articles using ASP.Net 3.5
http://imar.spaanjaars.com/QuickDocId.aspx?quickdoc=476
If you want to avoid having to write SQL query and concentrate on the data instead, go with the Entity Framework. It's quite well integrated with VS. It will connect to your SQL database, you will tell it which tables to import, and it will create a series of classes for you to talk to your database.
Queries are quite easy to do, and they will return lists of objects which should be easy to manipulate and put to a grid later on.
You can create datatables and populate them using the lists that you have generated and then bind your grid using the newly created tables as the datasource.