Help

[Ken Foskey]

I am a new VS and C# developer with 20 plus years programming experience
and I am finding the database stuff incredibly frustrating. I have read
programming c# 3.0 pretty much cover to cover, the c# cookbook does not
seem to have any database stuff (it is not obvious anyway). Even
committing a record is counter intuitive needing help from the
newsgroup. Despite all the clever gui stuff I would not give VS a high
rating for DB programming.

I need a fast start on database programming and interactions with
databinding. What would be the best place to read up on this so that I
am not struggling. What is the best place to post questions? I seem to
get no response on
microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.windowsforms.databinding

Please help me with some pointers, I have to deliver a solution urgently.

Thanks
Ken

 

[Leon Jollans]

What are you trying to do? when you say "DB programming" do you mean loading
and saving data to/from a DB? or do you mean writing database side functions
or stored procedure programming? Are you talking about databinding in a
windows application or in a web site? I'm sorry for the obvious question,
but I'm not sure where to start otherwise.

as far as database programming goes, it's basically all SQL so as long as
you know SQL and you can issue a SQL command to a database, you can do most
things. Maybe not in the quickest, most elegant fashion, but we all have to
start somewhere, and throwing over-designed data access approaches at you
without you first understanding the underlying operations will likely not
help you much.

if you want to load data from a SQL query into a data table, this code will
load and display all the tables in the database specified in the connection
string.

DataTable table = new DataTable();
using(SqlDataAdapter adapter = new SqlDataAdapter(
"select * from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES",
"[your connection string]"))
{
adapter.Fill(table);
}
foreach(DataRow row in table.Rows)
{
Console.WriteLine(row["TABLE_NAME"]);
}

if you want to view this in a GridView in a web page, you do

myDataGrid.DataSource = table;
myDataGrid.DataBind();

or if you have a DataGridView in a windows forms app, you only need set the
datasource, the DataBind call is not required. just set the DataSource, and
the data wil be shown.

I'm loth to go into more detail until I know more about what you're trying
to achieve as it's a potentially huge subject. However if you have more
specific questions Please ask. Data access is so fundamental to .NET
programming that someone here will have all the answers you need.

Leon

 

[Larry Smith]

I am a new VS and C# developer with 20 plus years programming experience

and I am finding the database stuff incredibly frustrating. I have read
programming c# 3.0 pretty much cover to cover, the c# cookbook does not
seem to have any database stuff (it is not obvious anyway). Even
committing a record is counter intuitive needing help from the
newsgroup. Despite all the clever gui stuff I would not give VS a high
rating for DB programming.

I need a fast start on database programming and interactions with
databinding. What would be the best place to read up on this so that I
am not struggling. What is the best place to post questions? I seem to
get no response on
microsoft.public.dotnet.framework.windowsforms.databinding

Please help me with some pointers, I have to deliver a solution urgently.

With that much experience you should be able to pick it up reasonably
quickly with the right book but you're obviously not going to become a
master overnight. That said, I have as much experience as yourself and a few
years ago I picked up a copy of "C# Complete" published by Sybex (very
inexpensive). It's really just a series of chapters on different topics
written by different authors. Chapters 11-14 in my (older) copy are devoted
to ADO.NET and lo and behold, I was quite surprised at the breadth of
coverage. It really does tackle the core topics in very good detail
(including data binding) and after just a few hours of pouring through it I
was already very comfortable with things (and surprised at just how
informative it was). Note that I was also new to C# and .NET at the time. In
any case, I haven't looked at it in a long time but IIRC it was really more
for self-starters. New programmers will likely have a tougher time with it
and there are perhaps better books on the subject, I don't know. An
experienced developer should have little problem with it however though if
you're completely new to Windows programming then you may have more hurdles
then I did (having worked on MSFT platforms since Bill was barely out of his
parents garage). BTW, don't be too too hard on VS and DB programming in this
environment. It really is very well designed, only poorly documented
(something I rant about all the time). Also make sure you read up on
strongly-typed datasets which is discussed in the book as I recall. You'll
definitely want to use it. Good luck.

 

[Ken Foskey]

What are you trying to do? when you say "DB programming" do you mean
loading and saving data to/from a DB? or do you mean writing database
side functions or stored procedure programming? Are you talking about
databinding in a windows application or in a web site? I'm sorry for the
obvious question, but I'm not sure where to start otherwise.

Not overnight, I have been slugging for almost two months. I am very
experienced so yes overnight is possible, doing it well will take months.
I am already rewriting old code

I need help with a post 'disappearing record' on this newsgroup. I just
found Update(datarow) as opposed to the whole table, maybe that is the
solution.

To explain how opaque the descriptions are take master child binding.
There is not one explanation that I can find that says simply: Check
your xsd find the relationship between the two tables eg customer and
orders. Right mouse click and name the relationship reasonably, eg
CustomerOrders. Every explanation I have seen assumes that step or
creates a relationship manually in code. I finally got that today.

I need to sit and really understand this well but I need something to
read to start with. I learn by reading first.

Ta
Ken