Introduction to ASP.NET 2.0 SqlDataSource Control - Accessing the Northwind database using SqlDataSource
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Start by creating a new ASP.NET web site by launching VS.NET 2005 and selecting File --> New --> Web Site. You will get the following dialog box.
Place the web site folder on the file system and select Visual C# as the coding language. We are not going to write any code in this article, but I'm a C# guy as you might be too. Switch to design view and drag the SqlDataSource Control to the page from the Data section of the Toolbox.
Now the SqlDataSource control is on the form and we need to configure it. You will note that there is a menu shown at the upper right corner of the control; this is called the task menu and you are going to see it a lot with other controls. It's used to configure some options of the control.
Click on Configure Data Source from the task menu of the SqlDataSource control and you will get the following dialog.
This dialog is used to choose the connection that the SqlDataSource control will use to get to the database. Since we didn't create any connections yet, click on the New Connection button to create a new connection. Note that if you have any connections in the Server Explorer they will be shown in the drop-down list. The following dialog will be shown.
This dialog is used to choose the Data Provider for the data access objects that the control creates, which depends on the Data Source. Choose Microsoft SQL Server to connect to your local SQL Server. Click on the Continue button.
The Add Connection dialog is shown. Select your server name and after that the database to which you want to connect. Now test the connection.
And when you click on the Test Connection button you will get the following message.
Now click OK, then OK to the Add Connection dialog, and you will return to the Configure Data Source dialog box -- but this time with the connection configured.
Click Next and you will get the following dialog box.
This dialog box asks you if you want to save the connection string in the web site configuration file. Simply put, a configuration file (which is named Web.Config) is used to configure ASP.NET web sites. Among those configurations is the connection string, which a connection object uses to know where the database server is and what database you want to access. You can find out more on connection strings in my articles about ADO.NET with ASP.NET 2.0; for now just click Next.
This dialog is used to build the T-SQL query used by the SqlDataSource control to retrieve the data. You have two options: you can write the T-SQL statement yourself or you can use the second option, the default option, which provides you with a tool that writes the query for you. In this example we will be using the second option which will write the T-SQL code for us. Select the Employees table from the drop-down list and select the following columns to be included in the query: EmployeeID, LastName, FirstName, Title, HomePhone.
Note that the T-SQL SELECT statement has been written in the preview section of the dialog, click on Next.
Now you can test to find out whether your query returns a result set by clicking on the TestQuery button as shown in the above screenshot. Click on finish and it's done; we now have a ready-to-use SqlDataSource object. Up to this point we didn't add the control that will use the SqlDataSource control to display the data on the page. So let's do it.
Next: Adding a GridView to the Page >>
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