Well, I finally broke down and decided to try using a Visual-Studio-Designed data layer for my latest web app (using Visual Web Developer 2005 Express, ASP.NET 2.0). It has worked out fairly well but one thing that drives me nuts is that the references to the stored procedures I used for the actual database actions are hard-coded in the XSD file. This makes it hard to Xfer to a production server since I have to change these references every time. I'm not comfortable enough with these files to toy with them- anyone know a way to make these references relative to the connection in the web config file? I don't understand why Visual Studio would think it was a good idea to hard code these links. Here's an example:
DbObjectName="[C:\MYSITE\APP_DATA\SGCHRDB.MDF].dbo.spGetQuestionbyID
DbObjectName="[C:\MYSITE\APP_DATA\SGCHRDB.MDF].dbo.spGetQuestionbyID