BindingList and column flexibility

Question

Everyone raves about BindingList in place of DataTable.

How do you guys overcome the problem of column flexibility? For BindingList I need to define and implement T object. If any new columns needed to be added, I need to add new properties to T object....while in DataTable this is much easier.

BindingList<T> samples = new BindingList<T>();

Is that something you live with or is there a relatively easy way to overcome thing?

using c# 2.0, compact framework.

Answer 1

There are still (occasional) advantages to using DataTable - and having column flexibility is one of them. That being said, there are cons as well.

A small comparison of advantages and disadvantages to each are listed in this blog post.

My personal rule of thumb is to use BindingList<T> to bind to a collection of business objects. In this case, the column issue goes away (you know the columns that are useful in advance already), and it feels much more natural.

DataTable is still useful if you're binding to an unknown thing, and trying to do the parsing at runtime.