Row States and Row Versions

ADO.NET manages rows in tables using row states and versions. A row state indicates the status of a row; row versions maintain the values stored in a row as it is modified, including current, original, and default values. For example, after you have made a modification to a column in a row, the row will have a row state of Modified, and two row versions: Current, which contains the current row values, and Original, which contains the row values before the column was modified.

When AcceptChanges is called on a DataSet, DataTable, or DataRow, all rows with a row state of Deleted are removed. The remaining rows are given a row state of Unchanged, and the values in the Original row version are overwritten with the Current row version values. When RejectChanges is called, all rows with a row state of Added are removed. The remaining rows are given a row state of Unchanged, and the values in the Current row version are overwritten with the Original row version values.

Each DataRow object has a RowState property that you can examine to determine the current state of the row. The following table gives a brief description of each RowState enumeration value.

The following code example displays the values in all the deleted rows of a table. Deleted rows do not have a Current row version, so you must pass DataRowVersion.Original when accessing the column values.

DataTable catTable = catDS.Tables["Categories"];

DataRow[] delRows = catTable.Select(null, null, DataViewRowState.Deleted);

Console.WriteLine("Deleted rows:\n");

foreach (DataColumn catCol in catTable.Columns)
  Console.Write(catCol.ColumnName + "\t");
Console.WriteLine();

foreach (DataRow delRow in delRows)
{
  foreach (DataColumn catCol in catTable.Columns)
    Console.Write(delRow[catCol, DataRowVersion.Original] + "\t");
  Console.WriteLine();
}