---
title: "CommandBuilder Internals and alternatives"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/3/24/commandbuilder-internals-and-alternatives.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/3/24/commandbuilder-internals-and-alternatives.html"
published: "2003-03-24T10:48:00"
updated: "2003-03-24T10:48:00"
tags: []
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "I spent last week developing our data management layer. Most of my testing was done with the CommandBuilder. Although it is a handy type, I found some limitations, so I developed our own custom model. I wish Bill's…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# CommandBuilder Internals and alternatives

By Roy Osherove March 24, 2003

**Historical article** · Originally published March 24, 2003; technical details may be outdated.

_I spent last week developing our data management layer.  Most of my testing was done with the CommandBuilder.  Although it is a handy type, I found some limitations, so I developed our own custom model.  I wish Bill's article would have come out a week sooner:_

[_http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnadonet/html/CommandBuilder.asp_](http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnadonet/html/CommandBuilder.asp)

\[[Greg Robinson](http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnadonet/html/CommandBuilder.asp)\]

Great article. I Especially liked this remark from the article:

"_Let's lay a little foundation first, for those getting started with Microsoft® ADO.NET. ADO.NET uses new technology to expose updatable rowsets. Well, it's not all that new if you're familiar with the Microsoft® Visual Basic 6.0 Data Object Wizard. (Homer Simpson would pronounce it, "D'Oh!")_"

D'OH indeed!!. I never knew about the data object wizard. Man this could have saved me some very precious hours along the way......... **D'OH**!


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

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### Contact

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### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/