Tutorial 4: Accessing databases using the

DataEnvironment Controll
Contents:
• Download and Run Example Program 7
• Build Example Program 7 from Scrach
o Database Design
o Software Design

Download and Run Example Program 7

This program is yet another swing on the ADO stuff. This time we're using the
*ahem* "recommended" database access mechanism for hitting Access Databases
from VB. This took a while to figure out, actually, and I'd like to credit Shaun upstairs
here for helping out on this one quite a bit (he's the one that found it and pointed it
out to me!!). :)

One of the possible disadvantages of this method is that you can't use the app.path
property to specify the install directory of your application (although I bet there is a
way). But you can just specify a filename for your database without a path and as
long as you never change the path that your application is looking at (with a
Common Dialog or something) you should be safe. Anyways, this is a cute example
and actually works quite well.

Okay, the steps to follow:

1. Just save the file to your desktop.
2. Double click the file to open it with winzip.
3. Click "Extract" and extract the file to your desktop (note: you need to extract
both files).
4. On your desktop, you should now have a folder called "DataEnvironment"
5. Go in there and double-click "Projcet1.vbp" (.vbp stands for "Visual Basic
Project")
6. Now, you should get VB loaded up with that project, no problem!

With that going, you can push the play button (center of the top tool bar) and see
what it looks like. There are a couple of things you can do with it:
• You can add CDs to the Database by entering some info in the textboxes and
pushing the "Add This Info" button
o This has changed: now, the "Add Entry" button will not enable until all
three textboxes contain text.
o The "Track Count" textbox will only accept numeric characters
o This program does not check for duplicate entries in the database. If
you do that, it'll crash. :)
• You can select a row from the grid and hit the "Remove Selected" button to
remove it permanently from the database
• The form now resizes properly. So, if you resize the form, the grid and frames
will resize appropriately (to a certain point)
 The new improved CD Collector program window

Pretty amazing, eh? :) Okay, so maybe not so amazing by this stage in the game. :)
back to top!!

Building Example Program 7 from Scratch

This version is a little smaller than the last one, but more weird to develop. :) Let's
get right into it, you'll probably already recognize the Database routine.

The Database Design

1. Open up MS Access (Start - Programs - Microsoft Access)
2. Pick "Start a blank database" from the wizard that pops up
3. Pick a spot to save the mdb file and a name for it (mine was
"CDCollectionA.mdb")
4. You'll get to the following window, where you double click on "Create a table
in design view:"
 the database design main window
5. When you double click that "create table in design view" thingie, you get to
this window:

The table design view window

6. You want to follow the following steps to get the table I was working with:
1. Make a field called ArtistName whose type is Text
2. Make a field called AlbumTitle whose type is Text
3. Make a field called Tracks whose type is Number (just a long integer is
cool enough)
 4. Select the rows in the design view (as pictured above) that have
ArtistName and AlbumTitle
5. Right-click on that selection, and pick Primary Key from the menu you
get. This will make both fields into primary keys. The idea is that they
can be primary because you'll never have identical artist names and
album titles (otherwise what's the point?!).
7. Once you've got your table built, just close that window. You'll be
automatically prompted to save changes to the table design and to give the
table a name. I picked CDs, how original. :)
8. Once that's all done, you can either add a couple entries to the database by
double clicking the CDs table from the database design main window and
inputting them manually or just move on to:

Software Design

Okay, a bit of this is going to be pretty tedious. :) Here we go:

1. Start up VB with a Standard EXE project.
2. Save that project to the same folder that your Database was saved in.
3. Go to the Project menu and select Components. In the Designers tab, select
the checkbox for Data Environment and click OK.

the references - designers window

4. This will add an item to your project menu. Go to the new menu item and
select it from Project - Add Data Environment.
5. The following window will pop up, and in it you should right-click on
Connection1 and select the Properties item from the list:
 the DataEnvironment edit window
6. Okay, the first thing we need to do is set up the connection to the database
(which is what Connection1 will be to the rest of the application). When the
properties window comes up,
1. select Microsoft Jet 4.0 OLE DB Provider as the data you want to
connect to and click Next
2. browse for your Database file, select it, and then remove the path (so
in the picture below, the highlighted text will get deleted)
3. you can test the connection to the database by pressing the Test
Connection button, but it should work fine.
 the Data Link properties dialog box
7. Once that's set, just hit OK.
8. Next, right-click on Connection1 in the Data Environment window like you did
above and pick Add Command. You'll see a thing called Command1 pop up
heirarchically underneath the happy Connection1.
9. Right-click on Command1 and select Properties from the menu that pops up
and do the following to customize Command1:
1. Change Command Name to DataTable
2. Select the SQL Statement radio button
3. In the textbox underneat that radio button, enter the query: select *
from CDs order by ArtistName, AlbumTitle
4. In the Advanced tab, change the Lock Type (it's a combo-box) from
1-Read Only to 3-Optimistic so that you can write to the database.
5. Press Apply, then OK, and you're good to go with your command.
 the command properties window
10. Now comes the cool part. :) Right click and hold the button on DataTable in
the Data Environment window, and drag to your main form.
11. When you release the right button on your form, you'll get a popup menu,
from which you should select Data Grid
12. When you release the button, presto! You get a data grid on your form that
will be perfectly connected to your database. Push the play button to see
what I mean. In any case, a lot of the rest will start to look kind of familiar to
you.
 right-click-drag from DataTable to the form to drop a pre-bound data display!!

13. Add two frames to the form using the tool and drawing them on the form.
o Change for one frame:
 its caption to Add Entry
 its (name) to fraAddEntry
o Change for the other (second) frame:
 its caption to Remove Entry
 its (name) to fraRemoveEntry
1.Draw the following controls in the Add Entry frame (yes, actually in the
frame):
A text box with the (name) txtArtistName
A label above that text box with the caption Artist Name
A text box with the (name) txtAlbumTitle
A label above that text box with the caption Album Title
A text box with the (name) txtTrackCount
A label above that text box with the caption Number of Tracks
A command button with the (name) cmdAddEntry and the
caption Add this info
2.Now, to the Remove Entry frame, add the following controls:
A command button with the (name) cmdRemoveEntry and the
caption Remove Selected
A label with the caption Select the entry you want to remove
and click the button:
14. In the form design window, double click the form, which should bring up the
code window with a blank Form_Load() subroutine. Here be's the code, which
looks a lot simpler than last time, but the same size-tracker variables are
defined globally:
Option Explicit
' couple'o global vars for size trackin'
Dim MinHeight As Long
Dim MinWidth As Long

Private Sub Form_Load()

' record the height and size of the window for reference
MinHeight = Form1.Height
MinWidth = Form1.Width

' disable the add button

cmdAddEntry.Enabled = False
End Sub
15. Okay, that's done. From the event ComboBox at the top of the code window,
pick the Resize event. You should then get a shell for the Form_Resize()
method. This gets called whenever you resize the form, and we'll just use it to
make a resized form look pretty. Here's what to fill in:
Private Sub Form_Resize()
' check to see if the form is getting too small (Note: this is just
to avoid
' the math necessary to shrink all the textboxes, hahahaha!!)
If MinHeight > Form1.Height Then
Form1.Height = MinHeight
Exit Sub
ElseIf MinWidth > Form1.Width Then
Form1.Width = MinWidth
Exit Sub
End If

' resize the flexgrid to fit nicely on the screen

DataGrid1.Width = Form1.ScaleWidth
DataGrid1.Height = Form1.ScaleHeight / 2

' resize the happy columns to look pretty (40% for each text
column, 20% for Track)
DataGrid1.Columns(0).Width = 0.4 * DataGrid1.Width
DataGrid1.Columns(1).Width = DataGrid1.Columns(0).Width
DataGrid1.Columns(2).Width = DataGrid1.Width -
(DataGrid1.Columns(0).Width * 2) - 60

' reposition and resize the frames on the screen to fit nicely
(there was no
' science here, just did it by trial and error)
fraAddEntry.Top = (Form1.ScaleHeight / 2) + 100
fraAddEntry.Height = (Form1.ScaleHeight / 2) - 150
fraAddEntry.Width = (Form1.ScaleWidth * 0.64)
fraRemoveEntry.Height = (Form1.ScaleHeight / 2) - 150
fraRemoveEntry.Top = (Form1.ScaleHeight / 2) + 100
fraRemoveEntry.Width = (Form1.ScaleWidth * 0.36) - 100
fraRemoveEntry.Left = fraAddEntry.Width + 100
End Sub
16. Now, go back to the form design window and double click the Add this info
button. You should now have a blank cmdAddEntry_Click() subroutine. The
code is pretty much identical to the old database example, but here's what to
fill in, anyways:
Private Sub cmdAddEntry_Click()
 ' add a new entry to our table.
With DataEnvironment1.rsDataTable
.AddNew
!ArtistName = txtArtistName
!AlbumTitle = txtAlbumTitle
!Tracks = txtTrackCount
.Update
End With

' requery the db and re-bind the data source to the data grid
DataEnvironment1.rsDataTable.Requery
Set DataGrid1.DataSource = DataEnvironment1
Call Form_Resize

' clear the text fields once the new record is added
txtArtistName = ""
txtAlbumTitle = ""
txtTrackCount = ""

' set the focus back to the artist name textbox

txtArtistName.SetFocus
End Sub
17. Now you need the remove code. In the form design window, double-click the
Remove Selected button. You should get a shell for the
cmdRemoveEntry_Click() subroutine. This is the code and I'm serious, that's
it:
Private Sub cmdRemoveEntry_Click()
' remove the currently selected item from the database
DataEnvironment1.rsDataTable.Delete adAffectCurrent
End Sub
18. Okay, if you go to the form design window, you have three textboxes:
txtArtistName, txtAlbumTitle, and txtTrackCount. Double click on each of
them in turn to get their associated Change methods and fill in the following
code:
Private Sub txtArtistName_Change()
' here, just check to see if each text field has contents. If they
all have
' contents (ie, they're not empty) enable the "Add Entry" button.
If txtArtistName.Text <> "" And txtAlbumTitle.Text <> "" And
txtTrackCount.Text <> "" Then
cmdAddEntry.Enabled = True
Else
cmdAddEntry.Enabled = False
End If
End Sub

Private Sub txtAlbumTitle_Change()

' just call the artist name change method because the code here
would be
' exactly the same.
Call txtArtistName_Change
End Sub

Private Sub txtTrackCount_Change()

' just call the artist name change method because the code here
would be
 ' exactly the same.
Call txtArtistName_Change
End Sub
19. While you're still in the txtTrackCount_Change() method, go to the event
ComboBox at the top of the code window and select the KeyPress event. You
should get a shell for the txtTrackCount_KeyPress(KeyAscii as Integer)
method. Here's the rest of the code for that, it just filters out alphabetic and
punctuation characters:
Private Sub txtTrackCount_KeyPress(KeyAscii As Integer)
' TrackKey will store which key was pressed in an _ascii_ value.
Dim TrackKey As String
TrackKey = Chr(KeyAscii)

' if the key pressed was a)not a number and b) not the backspace
key,
' just erase the keystroke (it won't get processed or sent)
If (Not IsNumeric(TrackKey) And Not (KeyAscii = vbKeyBack)) Then
KeyAscii = 0
End If
End Sub