Are .NET automatic data forms a good idea?

Question

I'm a Linux guy usually, but at the moment I'm trying to evaluate .NET for a Windows desktop application. All it needs to do is to display some forms that link to a database, let the user edit the data and then produce reports based on it. I found a walkthough at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms171884.aspx that automatically produces forms based on the data structure, which seems very nice!

On the other hand, I am concerned that this might be just a demo to show to managers :-) I didn't find easy ways to extend upon the pre-made forms, even basic things such as concatenating the first and last names together so people can be selected from a list. So here are my questions:

1. Is this technology extensible enough to allow me to create different types of forms and other reasonable requirements which may pop up?
2. Will I ever have to touch the massive amount of generated code that it makes?

Thanks!

Answer 1

There's nothing special about the procedure outlinked in the link you provided. The wizards just mimic what a regular programmer would do by hand.

Is this technology extensible enough to allow me to create different types of forms and other reasonable requirements which may pop up?

Check out T4 templates: http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2009/05/01/visual-studios-t4-code-generation.aspx

Will I ever have to touch the massive amount of generated code that it makes?

Only if you want to customize the output (which is usually).