Hi, Pretty new to all this. I cant seem to get my middle tier object to send me back a populated entity.

I am using adapter. I have a middle tier for business logic and data retrieval and updates, it inherits from the enitity. Like so:
public class ReleaseRequest : ReleaseRequestEntity

When I instantiate my middle tier object ReleaseRequest it automatically runs the default constuctor from ReleaseRequestEntity and produces a blank entity. This is fine for inserts. As I populate my object in the code behind and send it to the middle tier for logic and saving

But if I want to display data and send a populated ReleaseRequestEntity back to the UI so I can databind. I seem have to create a new populated entity. Rather than populating using the existing blank one created with the constructor.

Is there a way to do this, or should I not use this middle tier? Should the asp.net code behind page just talk directly with the entity? Not sure how I should design this?

Thanks in advance.

Sure, it is possible. Look this tiny example of how this could be achieved:

// this class expose funcionallity related to Products
public class ProductManager
{

     // this method returns all products, ready for databinding.
     public EntityCollection<ProductEntity> GetAllProducts()
     {
          EntityCollection<ProductEntity> productsToReturn = new EntityCollection<ProductEntity>();
          using (DataAccessAdapter adapter = new DataAccessAdapter())
          {
               adapter.FetchEntityCollection(productsToReturn, null);
          }

          return productsToReturn;
     }

     // this method add a new product
     public void AddNewProduct(ProductEntity productToAdd)
     {
          ....
     }

     // ... other methods
}

The EntityCollections are ready for databinding. You just need to clarify your architecture. For additional info on databinding, read the Databinding section of the manual.

Thanks for the tip. Got it working now.