DataGridView and DataSource: Any way to display fields linked to by foreign keys easily?

Question

I have a three-tier Windows Forms DB application in VB.NET. I'm using VS 2005.

I'd like to display records in a table in a DataGridView. I can already display the records as is by binding the DataSource to the business class that talks to the DB class:

Dim assetList as List(Of Asset)
assetList = DB_Asset.GetAssetListOrderByID_Asset 
AssetDataGridView.DataSource = assetList

"Asset" is my business class, and "DB_Asset" is my DB class that queries the DB to return assetList.

Now, Asset has members something like this:

Private m_ID_Asset As Integer
Private m_CategoryID As Integer
Private m_CustodianID As Integer
Private m_ManufacturerID As Integer
Private m_SignedOutToID As Integer
Private m_DefaultLocationID As Integer
Private m_CurrentLocationID As Integer
Private m_DateAcquired As Date
Private m_DateEntered As Date
Private m_EnteredByID As Integer

m _ ID _ Asset contains the primary key for the Asset table in the DB, and everything else of the form m_XXXXXXXXXID contains a foreign key to another table in the DB.

So basically what I get now is rows with a whole lot of numbers. It's exactly what's in the Assets table:

ID_Asset  CategoryID  CustodianID  ManufacturerID  SignedOutToID
   1           17          23            14              5

What I'd like to know is if there's an easy way to display the text fields that I've linked to with all of those foreign keys:

ID_Asset  CategoryName  CustodianName  Manufacturer  SignedOutTo
   1       Soda - Diet      John       Coca-Cola        Fred

Anyone with experience here have any tricks?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

If you have a List(Of Asset) then you basically just change your query DB_Asset.GetAssetListOrderByID_Asset so you are doing your required joins in there and assigning the values out of that property to assetList.

You would want to add something like m_CustomerName As String to your Asset class, along with whatever else you'll be retrieving so you have a place to put the data.

If you can't change your Asset class you probably want to wrap something around it that gets all those strings for you before you bind.