How to use Data aware controls "correctly"?

Question

I would like to ask experienced users, if you prefer to use data aware controls to add, insert, delete and edit data in DB or you favor to do it manualy.

I developed some DB applications, in which for the sake of "user friendly policy" I run into complicated web of table events (afterinsert, afteredit, after... and beforeedit, beforeinsert, before...). After that it was a quite nasty work to debug the application.

Aware of this risk (later by another application) I tried to avoid this problem, so I paid increased attention to write code well, readable and comprehensive. It seemed everything all right from the beginning, but as I needed to handle some preprocessing stuff before sending and loading data etc, I run into the same problems again, "slowly and inevitably". Sometime I could not use dataaware controls anyway, and what seemed to be a "cool" feature of DAControl at the beginning it turned to an obstacle on the end. I "had to" write special routine for non-dataaware controls, in order to behave as dataaware. Then I asked myself, why on earth should I use dataaware controls? Is it better to found application architecture on non-dataaware controls? It requires more time to write bug-proof code, of course, but does it worth of it? I do not know...

I happened to me several times, like jinxed : paradise on the beginning hell on the end...

I do not know, if I use wrong method to write DB program, if there is some standard common practice how to proceed. Or if it is common problem to everybody?

Thanx for advices and your experiences

Answer 1

I've written applications that used data aware components against TTable style components and applications which used non-data aware components.

My preference these days is to use data aware components but with TClientDataSets rather than TTable style components.

Using a TClientDataSet I don't have to make my user interface structure mimic my database structure. It's flexible enough to fill it with the data from several tables and then when you are applying the updates back to the database you can manually add/delete/update records as you see fit.