Serializing classes derived from dataset

[Aidan Glendye]

Hi,

I am trying to store various objects within session. Due
to the site being hosted in a web farm we are going to
have to use either State Server or SQL Server to persist
the data in session. All of the objects are classes which
inherit from a typed dataset.

Looking at MSDN I have found the following two (what I
believe to be) relevent statements (from article Object
Serialization in the .NET Framework):

"Derived classes should call the GetObjectData method on
the base object if the latter implements ISerializable"

and

"When you derive a new class from one that implements
ISerializable, the derived class must implement both the
constructor as well as the GetObjectData method if it has
any variables that need to be serialized."

Since the Dataset implements ISerializable the above
statements indicate that I should override the
GetObjectData method. However if I try and override this
method I get a compile error stating:

"sub 'GetObjectData' cannot be declared 'Overrides'
because it does not override a sub in a base class."

I am also unable to call the method GetObjectData on the
base class as it is not accessible.

The classes which I am trying to persist have their own
properties, some of which are themselves objects which
inherit from datasets.

If I create a test class which inherits from a typed
dataset, and which has two additional properites (named
Property1 and Property2) the following XML is persisted:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<xs:schema id="dsTemp"
targetNamespace="http://tempuri.org/dsTemp.xsd"
xmlns:mstns="http://tempuri.org/dsTemp.xsd"
xmlns="http://tempuri.org/dsTemp.xsd"
xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
xmlns:msdata="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-msdata"
attributeFormDefault="qualified"
elementFormDefault="qualified">
<xs:element name="dsTemp" msdata:IsDataSet="true"
msdataroperty1="1" msdataroperty2="Aidan">
<xs:complexType>
<xs:choice maxOccurs="unbounded">
<xs:element name="InvoiceHeader">
<xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="InvoiceHeaderID"
msdata:ReadOnly="true" msdata:AutoIncrement="true"
type="xs:int" />
<xs:element name="POHeaderID" type="xs:int"
minOccurs="0" />
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
</xs:choice>
</xs:complexType>
<xs:unique name="dsTempKey1" msdatarimaryKey="true">
<xs:selector xpath=".//mstns:InvoiceHeader" />
<xs:field xpath="mstns:InvoiceHeaderID" />
</xs:unique>
</xs:element>
</xs:schema>

Note that the properties have been serialized, but have
been serialized as "<xs:element name="dsTemp"
msdata:IsDataSet="true" msdataroperty1="1"
msdataroperty2="Aidan">"

I can find no way in which I can de-serialize these fields.

Can someone please explain how I can have a class which
inherits from a dataset, and which I can then serialize
and de-serialize without losing the properties.

Thanks in advance

Aidan

 

[Aidan Glendye]

Note that the xml which should have been displayed
indicated that the properties were included in a dataset
element as

msdataroperty1="1"
msdataroperty2="Aidan"