Learning VB and Database Use...

[John Hrusovszky]

As I stated in an earlier message, I am new to VB6 but am learning at a
fairly good pace. In a project I am doing to help my understanding of VB6
and programming, I am coding a Recipe Manager. While I know how to do the
GUI part and make everything look nice, and can even find the code to
read/write to a simple database I have created with Access, I am confused
about a few things with the structure of a database and if I should even use
Access.

I plan on distributing this program to friends and relatives that enjoy
cooking. Is it going to be a requirement that they have Access in order to
use it if I write information to an access database? I'm unsure how else to
get info into something that can hold all the information that needs to be
held in something like this -- Recipes, Cuisine Type, Ingredients,
Instructions, Pictures, and then Nutritional Value of meals, create menus
and grocery lists, etc. With those items included in a program of this
nature, I suspect I need something more than a simple flat database with 1
table and 10 or so fields in that table.

Any advice on this project that I am currently working on would be most
helpful.

Thank you.

[Bruce A. Wilkinson]

Hi

Sounds like a fairly straight forward project and a good one to learn with.
As far as Access goes, the install program will include the Access Data
Engine so it would not be a necessity for your friends to have purchased it
separately. As far as tables go, the variables are so vast that it would be
impossible to comment on. It depends on what you want to do with the
information and how you want to call and organize it. It might help you to
set these goals first and then sit down and use a flow chart to plan the
structure of the database before you build the program.

Good luck!

[Trevor Fairchild]

As far as MS Access goes - provided you are using VB code to access
the contents of the database, and NOT VBA code to operate within an
instance of Microsoft Access you will have no problems.

If you are not familiar with VBA (visual basic for applications), you
can include references within VB to VBA code for several Microsoft
products - including Access. This means you can, from within your
program, open a copy of Access, create new databases, open them, edit
them, etc, all as if you were actually in Access - stay away from
this.

Stick to an ADODB connection and nobody will need Access - the program
knows what it needs to get the data - obviously they won't be able to
open the .mdb file directly outside of your program. You'll need to
know SQL to write the Select, Insert, Delete, and Update statements