The heart of a first-class relational application is the capability to display parent-child relationships. Visual Studio 2005 presents a quite flexible tool to help rapid development of this functionality. In the Data Sources pane if you increase the tables, you will see under the fields, an entry for each child relationship of the table. In our example, increasing the Orders table node, you will see an entry for the relationship to the Order Details table. If you choose the representation and drag the relation node to the form, VS believe you want a master-detail arrangement and will created the needed relations for you.

VS will add a new module to the form for the table and a table adapter to fill up the table on form load. The Smart Data tag will expand you can click on the arrow in the higher right of the grid control to explain a number of properties and actions used for the control. The "Choose Data Source" should be set to the new binding basis based on the relation among the tables. This is every one that is needed to set the detail grid to connection with the master record. If you seem at the properties, you will see that the Data Source used for the newly added Binding Source is the Data Member in the connection.

If you compile and run the project presently, you will observe the linking between the master and detail parts. But the grid wants some editing to create it show productive data.

You will require replacing the with a combo box to show the name of the product in its place. This will require one more binding basis to be added to the form. Drag a Binding Source component from the Data part of the Toolbox, name it and put the Data Source property to Data Member property to the Products table.

At the present expand the Smart Tag on the control once more look at the Properties pane and click the "Edit Columns" action. This permits you to edit breadth and method of columns, reorder the columns, and add or delete columns. You can delete any columns that are not required and hide the Primary Key and Foreign Key fields. You should also convert the column from a Text Box control to a Combo Box control to show the value of Product Name. Set the Data Source property to Products, and the Display Member to the Value Member in the Product ID.

When the Order feature Binding Source was added, VS too added the following lines of code to the event to fill the Order Detail table.

That is every one we require to do. We can construct and run our application by pressing F5 selecting and then "Start Debugging from the Debug Menu. Here is an example of the last form running. See that the Navigation Bar let us to move between records and the Order Detail information is connected to the Orders record selected. Also in the navigation bar is a yellow asterisk switch to create a new record, a red X switch to delete the present record, and a diskette button to save changes.
Whereas VS 2003 offered one stiff wizard for RAD building of master-detail form, VS 2005 has an infrastructure to permit RAD construction of a thick variety of form styles. The Data Sources tool is a welcome development to Visual Studio.