Visual Basic® .NET Database Programming

Chapter 8. Bound Controls

Visual Basic lets you bind certain properties of controls to some kinds of data sources. For example, you can use a DataTable object to hold data from records in a database. You can then bind a ComboBox’s Text property to the DataTable’s State field. When the DataTable visits a record, it automatically updates the ComboBox’s Text property to display the value of the record’s State field.

The Data Form Wizard described in Chapter 5, “The DataSet Family of Objects,” uses binding to display records. Unfortunately, the code generated by the wizard is complicated and hard to understand. It defines classes you can use to manipulate the data with some degree of safety, but the classes are so complex that they add their own ...