.NET DataTable skips rows on Load(DataReader)

Question

I'm trying to populate a DataTable, to build a LocalReport, using the following:

MySqlCommand cmd = new MySqlCommand();
cmd.Connection = new MySqlConnection(Properties.Settings.Default.dbConnectionString);
cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text;
cmd.CommandText = "SELECT ... LEFT JOIN ... WHERE ..."; /* query snipped */

// prepare data
dataTable.Clear();
cn.Open();
// fill datatable
dt.Load(cmd.ExecuteReader());
// fill report
rds = new ReportDataSource("InvoicesDataSet_InvoiceTable",dt);
reportViewerLocal.LocalReport.DataSources.Clear();
reportViewerLocal.LocalReport.DataSources.Add(rds);

At one point I noticed that the report was incomplete and it was missing one record. I've changed a few conditions so that the query would return exactly two rows and... surprise: The report shows only one row instead of two. I've tried to debug it to find where the problem is and I got stuck at

 dt.Load(cmd.ExecuteReader());

When I've noticed that the DataReader contains two records but the DataTable contains only one. By accident, I've added an ORDER BY clause to the query and noticed that this time the report showed correctly.

Apparently, the DataReader contains two rows but the DataTable only reads both of them if the SQL query string contains an ORDER BY (otherwise it only reads the last one). Can anyone explain why this is happening and how it can be fixed?

Edit: When I first posted the question, I said it was skipping the first row; later I realized that it actually only read the last row and I've edited the text accordingly (at that time all the records were grouped in two rows and it appeared to skip the first when it actually only showed the last). This may be caused by the fact that it didn't have a unique identifier by which to distinguish between the rows returned by MySQL so adding the ORDER BY statement caused it to create a unique identifier for each row.
This is just a theory and I have nothing to support it, but all my tests seem to lead to the same result.

Answer 1

Just in case anyone is having a similar problem as canceriens, I was using If DataReader.Read ... instead of If DataReader.HasRows to check existence before calling dt.load(DataReader) Doh!

Answer 2

After fiddling around quite a bit I found that the DataTable.Load method expects a primary key column in the underlying data. If you read the documentation carefully, this becomes obvious, although it is not stated very explicitly.

If you have a column named "id" it seems to use that (which fixed it for me). Otherwise, it just seems to use the first column, whether it is unique or not, and overwrites rows with the same value in that column as they are being read. If you don't have a column named "id" and your first column isn't unique, I'd suggest trying to explicitly set the primary key column(s) of the datatable before loading the datareader.

Answer 3

Don't use

dr.Read()

Because It moves the pointer to the next row. Remove this line hope it will work.