Walkthrough: Display Data from a SQL Server

Database in a DataGrid Control

.NET Framework (current version)

In this walkthrough, you retrieve data from a SQL Server database and display that data in a DataGrid control. You use the
ADO.NET Entity Framework to create the entity classes that represent the data, and use LINQ to write a query that retrieves the
specified data from an entity class.

Prerequisites
You need the following components to complete this walkthrough:
Visual Studio 2012.
Access to a running instance of SQL Server or SQL Server Express that has the AdventureWorksLT2008 sample database
attached to it. You can download the AdventureWorksLT2008 database from the CodePlex Web site.

To create entity classes

1. Create a new WPF Application project in Visual Basic or C#, and name it DataGridSQLExample.
2. In Solution Explorer, right-click your project, point to Add, and then select New Item.
The Add New Item dialog box appears.
3. In the Installed Templates pane, select Data and in the list of templates, select ADO.NET Entity Data Model.

4. Name the file AdventureWorksModel.edmx and then click Add.

The Entity Data Model Wizard appears.
5. In the Choose Model Contents screen, select Generate from database and then click Next.

6. In the Choose Your Data Connection screen, provide the connection to your AdventureWorksLT2008 database. For more
information, see Choose Your Data Connection Dialog Box.

7. Make sure that the name isAdventureWorksLT2008Entities and that the Save entity connection settings in App.Config
as check box is selected, and then click Next.
8. In the Choose Your Database Objects screen, expand the Tables node, and select the Product and ProductCategory
tables.
You can generate entity classes for all of the tables; however, in this example you only retrieve data from those two
tables.

9. Click Finish.
The Product and ProductCategory entities are displayed in the Entity Designer.

To retrieve and present the data

1. Open the MainWindow.xaml file.
2. Set the Width property on the Window to 450.
3. In the XAML editor, add the following DataGrid tag between the <Grid>and </Grid>tags to add a DataGrid named
dataGrid1.
XAML
<DataGrid Name="dataGrid1" />

4. Select the Window.

5. Using the Properties window or XAML editor, create an event handler for the Window named Window_Loadedfor the
Loaded event. For more information, see How to: Create a Simple Event Handler.
The following shows the XAML for MainWindow.xaml.

Note
If you are using Visual Basic, in the first line of MainWindow.xaml, replace
x:Class="DataGridSQLExample.MainWindow"with x:Class="MainWindow".

XAML
<Window x:Class="DataGridSQLExample.MainWindow"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
Title="MainWindow" Height="350" Width="450"
Loaded="Window_Loaded">
<Grid>
<DataGrid Name="dataGrid1" />
</Grid>
</Window>
6. Open the code-behind file (MainWindow.xaml.vb or MainWindow.xaml.cs) for the Window.
7. Add the following code to retrieve only specific values from the joined tables and set the ItemsSource property of the
DataGrid to the results of the query.
C#
using System.Data.Objects;
using System.Linq;

using System.Windows;
namespace DataGridSQLExample
{
/// <summary>
/// Interaction logic for MainWindow.xaml
/// </summary>
public partial class MainWindow : Window
{
AdventureWorksLT2008Entities dataEntities = new
AdventureWorksLT2008Entities();
public MainWindow()
{
InitializeComponent();
}
private void Window_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
ObjectQuery<Product> products = dataEntities.Products;
var query =
from product in products
where product.Color == "Red"
orderby product.ListPrice
select new { product.Name, product.Color, CategoryName =
product.ProductCategory.Name, product.ListPrice };
dataGrid1.ItemsSource = query.ToList();
}
}
}
8. Run the example.
You should see a DataGrid that displays data.

Next Steps
See Also
DataGrid

How Do I: Get Started with Entity Framework in WPF Applications?

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