Simple database - what's the easiest way to implement?

[garyusenet]

Hi all,

Im in the process of writing a simple application. I have a form which
has on it five text boxes.

I would like to store information that is entered into these text boxes
in a small database. My question is what is the simplest most effective
way of doing this?

I've heard over the past month or so in my reading ADO, SQL and various
other words / technologies but am confused. To start with I just want
to know the best way to add some database functionality to my app. The
database will be small. It will have about five records added to it per
day. The application will be used by four employee's and hence the
database will need to be multi-user.

Thankyou for reading my explanation, I have two questions now.

1. What database format should I use?

2. How do I add functionality to my small app to support this database?
i.e. Please list a couple of the steps that i'd need to take to get
this started.
And please also tell me how I tell my controls to store there
value in this database.

Many thanks, your help is invaluable!

Gary.

[garyusenet]

No replies to this yet... Can someone have a go please?

[Jacob]

I'll have a go. I believe that VS (and Express versions) can create mdb
(MS Access) files for you and you can use them directly wth VS (but I
don't think it has very good multiuser support - but you can get around
this by using datasets). So that would be a good free way to do it.
Another popular free option is MySQL, but for only four people it
sounds like overkill.

To use an mdb file simply include it in your project, add a connection
(OleDb) and create the queries you need. You would for example need a
query to get data out of the db and another to put some data in and a
third to update data.

Your controls do not need to be aware that there is a database. The db
communication can be done when a button is pushed (unless you want two
way data connectivity) using the db connection and the queries.

Your question is quite open ended, but I hope this gets you on your way.

[garyusenet]

Thankyou jacob. Eventually there may be fifteen users using the app. I
have Visual Studio Professional and MS SQL Server (but only have a
client licence for that). Is there a more effective way that I should
be using those two together? Or should I stick with an MDB file? Is SQL
server a 'server program' i.e. it sits on a fileserver or am I
misunderstanding the terminology?

Thanks,
Gary.

[Jacob]

I had forgotten about SQL Server Express (free) which sounds like what
you need. It's a server software that sits on you db 'server' (in fact
any accessible network computer) and holds your databases. Like mdb
files it is directly integrated in VS. Your app sends its queries to
the db server and this in turn sends you the results.

What the best way to communicate with the db is depends on how the
users use the data. Are there frequent updates? Frequent lookup? Does
data need to be shared real-time?

[garyusenet]

Thankyou Jacob for your continued help.

It's a simple application. We use Act! here. And the application is a
front end for adding new contacts to Act! - using the Act! Api.
The act side of things i've now sorted. And can read data and write
data to the act database without any problems. So the primary function
of the app is that on a daily basis when a lead calls into the office,
the app is launched, key details entered - and then the act database is
updated with these new lead details.

Can you take a quick look at the front end it'll help you understand
the apps function
http://www.strident.net/appfrontend.jpg

Basically, all i want to be able to do is remember past leads that have
been entered via this app, so that when a caller name is being entered,
the app has a kind of intellisense predicting the name of the caller
from it's history of caller names - this function is designed to alert
us if a lead is being entered that we have already been in touch with
in the past. So my idea was that i'd run a seperate small app database
for remembering this infomation.

Secondly you will see the salesman label, and the next salesman button.
The app needs to look at a list of six salesman and allocate one to
each lead as it comes in. It will decide which salesman to give a lead
to by looking at a table of salesman and figuring out who is due a lead
next in the cycle.

I hope now you can see why I need a database, and have a better
understanding of my apps use.