The concerted work that goes on here in really impressive. I'm also thinking about a mass mailed note I received from S. Somesegar, corporate VP of Microsoft development. He said that MS Engineers were not alone in building VS2005. Customers had a lot to do with it to make it as neat as it is.
Continuing in that vein, I though it may be a contribution to see if we can't put together an FAQ that will take care of a large number of the routine questions.
If you'd like to contribute to this let's try the following:
In a post to this thread, add:
1.) A Title
2.) A fully stated question in FAQ form
3.) The best answer you can come up with.
After a while.... We'll all review this and see if we can't come up with a format that works for us and see if we can't make this work.
Please stay on topic with this.
Let's go to work on an FAQ for this Forum
Sanjay Patel
There are 2 particular "brickwalls" I am always running into when I first start with any new technique whether it be a "Language" or whatever (please forgive the unstructured nature of the following, after all it IS Saturday):
(1) translating your problem into a "statement" which someone (an author) has previously indexed (hopefully, multiply). I have literally spent/wasted many hours trying to solve a problem because I simply do not know how to correctly define it i.e. to predict what keywords some author may have already indexed - most problem solutions are usually only as far away as good referencing on the author's part and good intuition on mine/yours. Take for example how you can recover quickest after a real calamity in getting VB2005 to talk to SQL or Access or other database or how to create, add, modify, rename, delete some major (or even minor) thingo - I won;t start talking about objects, methods, operators as they tend to confuse me and many others although I can lay claim to understanding (somewhat) what a property is.
(2) because I don't know how to solve many of my problems, can't find the answer anywhere and don't want to embarrass myself by bloating the forum all the time, I tend to zap the entire project (because the error was unrecoverable) and start again. Things like: deleting/renaming/changing a project, database, dataset, table, column etc. I learned slowly how to accomplish myself, yet must be requirements for many other newbies too. And in particular what not and never to do as I've corrupted my designer a few times already and had to reinvent the whole wheel. I still don't know if I've damaged VB2005's internals through some of the things I have done. I suspect I might have in a current problem I have which Shakalama and I are working on. So just how resilient is VB2005 from us users I guess no one knows, yet!.
(3) One thing I have implemented is to print off the source of my current project at least daily (say after every 100 lines of code or so) and also copying the entire My Documents/Visual Basic 2005 Express folder to CD in a grandfather/father/son manner, so I can at least recreate things (and only lose a day max). When time is available, I intend re-downloading VB2005 to disk as a local backup - whether reinstalling VB2005 will have any effect on current project code I don't know - yet another answer I will have to look for. These are the sort of major/major problem areas that should be dealt with up front in my opinion, particularly because I (and probably > 50% in this southern land) only have 56K (haha) dial-up - 1800's technology in the 21st century yet.
(4) Only then does my interest turn to the common language/databasse problems. SQL-VB2005 has proved to be too formidable for me so far - another 6 months I should be ok with it, but in the meantime, I've had to revert to Access 2.0 which over 10 years after its making is still a handy and powerful tool. If I didn't have a copy, I'd be in real trouble, so I guess the majority of newbies having only SQL 2005 or nothing, much work needs to be done to make the VB/SQL linkage/maintenance task far more understandable/recoverable.
Documentation (internal & external to your source) - the more the better; test, test and retest for every conceivable possibility and combination thereof (but don't lose sight of the 80/20 rule), are just a few tips I could give. As for design, well most system analyst/builders spend as much if not more time conferencing/writing specs/paper-trially/flow-charting/process-flow charting than actual coding - that comes last - well before live testing I mean.
The above are just a few thoughts from an ancient programmer/analyst after a few Saturday afternoon tipples, lol. But really guys, the off-line work is far more important and time-consuming, yet most necessary, than the "building", irrespective of the computer language.
To those who already know this, please disregard but I hope it helps some guys out. Oh, guys = gents +ladies of course.
Happy IT'ing guys
mirren_st
Rather than having a lot of web pages to manage for our vb-tips website we store the tips html in a sql server database. The web page will get the html from the database. We display the tips html inside of a div control. This makes the website much more managable.
SQL Server has a feature call Full Text Search which will create a catalog of all the words. We use FreeText to search the catalog for words or phrases contained in the tips.
Jorge Tressino Rua
hi,
Q : My Project doesn't save!! , When i run my application i can edit my database but when i stop debugging i find my database records still the same with no changes
A: Actualy you have 2 databases not one
the origional one in the project folder (that you see in your IDE)
the second one in your project/bin/debug folder , its just for testing every time you run your application the testing database will be replaced by fresh copy from the origional one so every time you debug you lose the previous changes
so you have some options to be able to see your database changes
1) see your changes in the database that lies in debug folder not the one in your project folder
2) select your database in your solution explorer and go to properties tab >> copy to output folder property >> select copy if newer like that you will see your previous changes as long as you didn't change your database design
3) if you use MSaccess database the wizard will ask you to import it to your project folder or not , don't import the database to your solution folder then you will see and edit the same copy of your database
Best Regards
sadyc
There is an extensive list of charting tools at http://www.howtoselectguides.com/dotnet/charting/ gclid=CI3qmqbu6IICFUksGAodv3qi0g
All in one place, prices from free to $$$, feature lists, and download sites. I found it quite helpful.
Mable
SidC
Charting/graphing
mbaciak
It was meant as an apology in afterthought, in case I had offended anyone Renee.
Please get back on topic. It is your topic is it not
Cari Begle
"Oh, guys = gents +ladies of course"
Then it will be ok with you that I call everyone ladies, here
Vincent Zhao
Hello Gals.......
elisheva
Thanks for that tip Ken. Your Bog will be a community asset.
The FAQ I was thinking about would have pointers to good discussions on like "How to Learn VB etc".
Renee
NathanINTJ
Keep it up Shak!!!!!! Thank you!!!!
I had you in mind when I began this !!!
VeSO
Morpheus72
Q : When i run my application i can edit my database but when i stop debugging i find my database didn't change no record have been added to it or no row have been changed
More simple answer to this question than shakalama answered.
In vs2005 IDE solution, set your database property "Copy to output directory" to "Copy if newer".
cambomj
Q : when i write a program does my client have to have .net Framework \ can't i write independent program without asking my clients to download .net Frameworks
A : Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
actualy you don't write program from scratch in .net framework you use framework libraries, and engine
so your project will not run untill you provide the engine and the supportive libraries ,
as well as the programs that made with java need JVM to be running on your computer , the programs that you will write in VB.net need .net framworks to be running on your system
best regards
tonyGasparich
Ken,
That's an incredibly neat idea.
I'm falling in love with tab controls. Were it up to me I think I' put an faq on a series of tab controls.