Comments by Dino the Sink (Top 17 by date)

Actually, there is such thing as javascript, it is a client side scripting language and it actually is what a log of asp.net is built on behind the scenes. and as i said, the javascript runs correctly, so i did not feel it was necessary to include that in the post. And rather than being an A-hole with your riddle comment, a simple "This is a little confusing" would have been more appropiate. i will edit my original post and maybe someone with more manners could comment.

I fond that this is the best solution that meets my needs. and as I have been further researching, when the data provider is a SQL Database, the query will not accept named parameters when the command type is text. in order to use named parameters, the command type must be a stored procedure. using the ? in the sql statements, and then adding the parameters to the specific command (Delete, Insert, Select, Update) in the same order in which they are used in the corresponding command works when the backend database is SQL or Access. This allows me to use a single class for my data access regardless of the data source (SQL Server or Access). The second solution, while elegant, is complex and more suitable for a larger application that requires a more reliable, robust data connection layer that what my needs are.

For a large application, this may be a good approach, but I am building an application that is simple and small. it connects to existing databases for internal applications. These internal applications have a very specific scheme and that scheme is the same regardless of if they are SQL Server or Access. some of the databases (SQL Server) are large, but all internal applications developed have the same 4 tables with the same columns that handle usernames, versioning, logging and application errors. These tables are very small only 5-6 columns each. my application has 2 forms, a login form, on this form I specify the datasource parameters and from here build the oledb connection string, and then log into the database and retrieve the contents of the other 3 tables and display them for manipulation. the approach you recommend sounds great for a large application, but with the size of my application, I think that would make a lot more code than just figuring out why the named parameters does not work for an OLEDB Connection to a SQL Server.

Yes using SQLClient would make more sence, but this is a very small application and I need it run connecting to either a SQL Database or an access database. The code I posted is a more consolidated version of it. I have actually encapsulated the database layer in a class, pass the connection string to the class when I initialize it and return the dataset to my form where I manipulate the dataset. I then pass the dataset back to my class to perform any updates. I want to use the OLEDB Provider because it works with both SQL Server and Access, with minimal changes. I don’t want a class for SQL and a separate class for Access. In doing this, I have to fill my form with non-sensical if then statements to determine which class to use for the different operations.

This code works when connecting to the Access database, just not the SQL database.

I ended up using this solution, but I could not get the custom extension for copytodatatable to work, but my application is small enough, where I just looped through the results of the LINQ query and built a datatable object and returned that to my form. thanks for the suggestions.

the first option is too complex for me to grasp at this point, I am still a beginner programmer. but the second is easier to understand. I am not 100% sure about what an ienumerable is at this point, but I will research. as it turns out, I didn't need to type the qry vaiable as I thougnt. I guess because I am assigning it a value at the same as I am declaring it. I do get an error with the DT.copytodatatable() line see below

Error 1 'CopyToDataTable' is not a member of 'System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable(Of <anonymous type="">)'.

This makes since thanks. I will try this. one question, I have option strict turned on so I have to type the variable qry, what is the type for that variable. do I need to add any references and import any classes to use this?

I would be if it helps my problem and makes it more simple. I just know nothing about linq

I can't post the content of the file, all I can say is that it is not in csv\delimited format. it is both sequential and delimited at the same time. I have several hundreds lines of code that parses the file looking for certain key words. the best way I can describe it is if you are familiar with a running config file from a cisco device. you have a keyword such as interface, then the name of the interface. the next line will contain all the individual commands that configure the interface.

The inconsistency of the source file is why I am parsing it into datatables.

I am used to sql based tables so that is why I chose a dataset with multiple tables. I have not used linq.

I thought about ado.net but the text files are not delimited so I am parsing them using several different delimiters based on how a line begins and what keywords are in a line. Plus I don't have a single file per table. I have to process several files in this way to build my tables.