[AccessD] Dot Net, where to start?

The chapters on ADO.Net give a good overview of datasets, data providers
and the actual relational objects (tables, views, etc.), and it also
compares ADO.Net and ADO as well.  But I haven't seen any books
describing the data tier structures in the way we built them.  Most of
the books start with directly binding a form to a data adapter, and we
work the other way around.  We build data "entities" that implement
typed datasets and expose the behaviors and methods we need.  We can
then drop one of those entities on a form or report to provide the data
connections we need.  The working code is actually in a dataprovider
class with the entity containing calls to the dataprovider and even to
other entities if need be.

Our model has evolved as we developed the apps and figured out what
worked, and we have "refactored" (a much overused work in our shop) the
bits and pieces many times over the course of the past two years.  

Charlotte Foust 

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Gustav Brock
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2007 8:59 AM
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: Re: [AccessD] Dot Net, where to start?

Hi Charlotte

That is so true; database handling is a key point. Also, I've seen so
much poor code from web programmers that just know how to connect to a
database and think that's it.

That book, does it explain in depth of n-tier which I feel is very
important and powerful?
And is your data tier built on that code or did you create it from
scratch?

/gustav

>>> cfoust at infostatsystems.com 27-04-2007 17:10 >>>
But courses like that don't focus on Gustav's main issue, databases.
Rick Dobson has a couple of books out that can be helpful in that area:
"Programming SQL Server 2000 with Visual Vasic .Net" and "Programming
Microsoft Visual Basic .Net for Microsoft Access Databases".  The big
thing to get your head around is n-tier programming, which we didn't do
in Access.  The books tend to go straight to dataadapters and so forth
and don't generally discuss the structure of a data tier.  We created a
data tier that is a code representation of the underlying data
structure.  We can then code to that abstraction regardless of whether
we have access to the actual data at the time.  Very handy.

Charlotte Foust  

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Arthur Fuller
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2007 7:29 AM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: Re: [AccessD] Dot Net, where to start?

Go to GotDotNet and download all the samples. Do it relatively quickly
since MS has decided to phase out this site. Also go to Visual Studio
Magazine and CodePlex.

There is a very good intro book called VB.NET JumpStart (google
vbJumpStart and you should get to the downloadable code). I found this
book so good that I am currently thinking that .NET is even easier than
Access.

Arthur


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