views:

118

answers:

1

Given this schema:

Fruits
 - FruitID       INT PK
 - FruitName     NVARCHAR(30)
 - FruitStatusID INT NULL FK: Statuses

Statuses
 - StatusID      INT PK
 - StatusName    NVARCHAR(30)

If I have a FruitID in hand (just an int, not a Fruit object), how do I update the FruitName and null out FruitStatusID without loading the Fruit object from the database first?

Note: this solution gets me pretty far, but I can't figure out how to null out a FK column.

Answers in C# or VB, thanks!

A: 

This works but seems unnecessarily complicated:

''//initialize the values I'm going to null out to something
Dim Tag As Data_Tag = New Data_Tag() With {
  .Data_Tag_ID = DataTagID, 
  .Last_Error_DateTime = New DateTime(), 
  .Last_Error_Message = "", 
  .Last_Error_Severity_Type_ID = -1 }

''//start change tracking
DB.Data_Tags.Attach(Tag)

''//record changes to these properties (must be initialized above)
Tag.Last_Error_DateTime = Nothing
Tag.Last_Error_Message = Nothing
Tag.Last_Error_Severity_Type_ID = Nothing

DB.SubmitChanges()

Surely there's a better way!

(note: the weird comment syntax is solely for the code highliger--it doesn't like VB-style comments)

Michael Haren