Hello,

I have a problem with mapping .NET enumerations to database tables. Imagine I have a table called Statuses with the following values:

StatusID | Name

1 Draft

2 Ready

...

...

In the application layer, I can either use a Repository to get all Statuses as an IList object. However, the problem with this approach is that I cannot reference a certain status in my business logic. For example, how can I implement something like this?

if (myObject.Status is Ready)
    do this
else if (myObject.Status is Draft)
    do that...

Since the statuses are loaded dynamically, I cannot tell for sure what particular Status object in the List represents the Draft or Ready status.

Alternatively, I could just use an enumeration like

public enum Statuses
{
    Draft, 
    Ready
};

Then I could easily use an enumeration in my business logic.

if (myObject.Status == Statuses.Draft)
    // do something...

However, the problem with this approach is that every time the user wants to modify the list of Statuses (adding a new status, or renaming an existing status) the application has to be re-compiled. We cannot load the statuses dynamically from the database.

Has anyone else come across a similar situation? Any solutions/patterns?

Cheers,

Mosh