This is bugging me.........

[herewegoagain]

I am new to vb.net and ado.net but getting a better grasp of it every day.
What is bugging me is that I am writing this app and all is going pretty well. But tell me when it comes time to package this app up and send it off to the friend since I am building it wtih a connection string based on my SQL desktop engine how are they going to be able to install and run it on their computer? they have a sql desktop engine as well. Is there soemthing in the packaging wizard that will adderess this or how does this work?

 

[Derek Stone]

The easiest solution would be to allow the user to specify their own connection parameters.

 

[herewegoagain]

Okay so how do I do that?

Okay so how do I do that?

 

[Derek Stone]

The same way that every other application does it. With a configuration dialog.

 

[herewegoagain]

Ok........

Ok doing a search in VS for configuration dialog to see what I can come up with as I have never done this before. Any suggestions anyone might have this would be cool. If the user were to specify a connection string in setup wouldnt the datasets have to all be regenerated?

 

[Derek Stone]

You add a new form to your project and set it up as a configuration dialog. Users set various options using it, and your application uses these settings to connect to the database of their choice.

 

[Bryan]

or you can just store the connection string in an .INI file and just change it manually. But that isnt as cool.

 

[herewegoagain]

INI File

I thought I had to use a config.app for that. It will be cool if I can figure out how to do an INI file.
Does anyone have code sample for an Options dialog form using config.app? Or any other suggestions? I thought about using the registry to store values but I am not knowledgeable on this.

 

[Derek Stone]

INI files havent been supported by Microsoft since the introduction of Windows 95. Either use the registry or the .NET standard, XML files.

Microsoft.Win32.Registry and System.Xml should serve you well.