The relations between the tables in the time tracker database is somewhat complicated to me, I can't figure out how to insert enough and correct records to let the application running without throw exception that is caused by can't finding relevant data.
Can anyone send me some working data? Great appreciation!

My email: [email protected]

Are you reading and following the book chapter-by-chapter? The reason that I ask is that the book was designed to take you through the application chapter by chapter with each chapter building on the previous chapter.

Chapter 1 has a diagram of the relationships between the tables in the database.

If you could be more specific as to what chapter you are having problems with I would be glad to try to assist you.

Thanks,
Thearon

Yes, I read the book chapter-by-chapter, but mainly on copy-paste the try-it-out code to build the application. What I mean is some data but not the table structure. I got trouble in chapter 12 when the timesheets table got in use, to get the application working there should be many entries of data in the TimeSheetItems table which should be related to the other table. I think that the author would be better provide some sample data for that, so reader don't need to figure that out themselves.
Thanks.

Hi,

I am the author and I'm trying to help. Could you give me the page and step number that you are having problems with?

Thearon

The problem(may be I shouldn't say it's a problem) arises after I paste all code before page 414. After I log in using a user who is in the "Manager" role, I push the Employee comboBox and select an Item, then select a date in the Week Ending comboBox, the SQL Server gave me some error like:(there is some words in my locale, so I try to translate them to English)
System.InvalidCastException: there is no operator "+" for type “Integer” and type “DBNull” #12290;
   at Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices.Operators.A ddObject(Object Left, Object Right)
   at Time_Tracker.TimeSheet.LoadTimeSheet(ComboBox WeekEndingDate) location K:\VisualStudio\SQL\Time Tracker\TimeSheet.vb:line number 105

After debugging I figured out that the problem is there isn't the relevant data entries in table TimeSheetItems associate with the user and the date I selected. What I want you, the author, is to provide us some sample data that can be imported to the database and let the application work.

By the way, I've found that the code simply do the exception handling with a message box showing out the error message isn't very helpful to debug the code, while debugging I have to comment the try-catch block to left the exception unhandled so that I can see detailed explanation when exception is thrown.

Forgot to say, the code in the time tracker didn't pay good attention to DBNull arising when some data entry needed isn't available. I've found about three or more places where I have to add some code like below to let the code run.
if isDBNull(someEntryRetrievedFromDataBase) then
destinationVariable = String.Empty
else
destinationVariable = someEntryRetrievedFromDataBase

I don't know whether this would cause problem when dealing real world case where the data is in large quantity, but I guess there would be some users who don't have timeSheetItem associated. I'd like to hear from you what is the real world case, thank you very much!

The first step in testing the application at the point you indicated was to log on as a user first. This would have created the appropriate timesheet entries in the database. It is unclear if you have done this but if you try to do that first, then logging on as a manager should work fine.

While I'll admit that the application is far from perfect, it does serve the purpose of the book in showing you how to write database applications using Visual Basic 2005.

Part of the unit and system testing of your applications will be to find the weak parts of the design in your application and to add the appropriate error handling to display useful errors.

I hope this helps.

Thearon

Thanks for your patience, Thearon.
I do apologize for not reading the book carefully before posting here, I didn't notice that the TimeSheetItems table is filled automatically when Logging in correctly. I wish I haven't bothered you.