In the last few posts on LINQ to SQL I’ve showed how to set up an object model using the O/R designer and how to handle a couple data binding scenarios with Comboboxes here and here. Last post on this topic we implemented a one-to-many data entry form and I showed how to work with stored procs as well as how to properly configure delete behaviors. In this post I want to explore how to easily add validation rules to our LINQ to SQL classes and how we can get these rules automatically displayed in the UI.

Beth Massi – Sharing the goodness that is VB : Simple Validation with LINQ to SQL Classes

One of the great things about .NET Framework is that there is so much included to make your life as a developer easier. Over the past few years we’ve been flooded with new capabilities. Staying current with all of these tools is nearly a full-time job. So what’s a developer to do? I choose to pick the tools that apply directly to a problem I need to solve and use those new capabilities to enhance my productivity. Even more power and flexibility comes when we can take several of these capabilities and combine them for a unique solution to a problem.

We’re going to look specifically at three pieces of the framework that can be combined to provide a new technique. This technique helps in writing more responsive ASP.NET pages, while at the same time making the code more readable. The three technologies are: XML literals, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Factory Services and LINQ. XML literals and LINQ are new in Visual Basic 9 (VB9). LINQ gives us a common syntax for querying just about any data, be it SQL, XML or objects. Even though WCF has been here for a while, the out-of-the-box readiness for building factory services is little-known. Here we’ll show you how to create WCF services without changes to config files for endpoints, behaviors and bindings.

Visual Studio Magazine Online | On VB: XML Literals, WCF and LINQ

So for a recent research project, I decided I would look into the LinqDataSource’s
control GroupBy and OrderGroupBy attributes
to see if they could be used to help me build a grid that supports grouping.ÂÂ
Below is the final screen shot for my reference application.  The grid shows
the rows in the Northwind Orders table – grouped by the customer that placed the order.ÂÂ
The group of orders for each customer can be expanded/collapsed by clicking on the
plus/minus icon (no postback required).  Read on if you are interested in the
details.  If you download the code, make sure to update the connection string
in the web.config to point to your Northwind database.

Matt
Berseth: Building a Grouping Grid with the ASP.NET 3.5 LinqDataSource and ListView
Controls