Hi, I have a simple doubt in my mind.
I buildin an simple Members app in VB.NET,that will be installed in several client machines and that connects to a central SQL database server to store and get list of data. The users must fill some forms to store the Member data in DB and some other search forms.
Question :
Should i create a member class, and create properties such as name, addr,phone, and other methods and use an instance of the class to insert and display the data, or should I simple skip that and insert the data from the controls, directly into Database through an simple INSERT ?

Tks in advance


PB

That's like asking "should I drive or wear my hat?"

If you use an entity class for the data you will still need to get that data to the database whether you use the ado.net data objects to create a new row or do a simple insert statement.

If you are building just a simple application, you might want to just use the controls. But simple applications have a tendency to grow quickly so you aught to consider that as well.

Peter
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Work smarter, not harder.

Ok, but in case this simple app becomes a little more complex, what are the real advantages of starting to use entity Classes and objects to manipulate the data. I just want to get the data in the Database via the simplest way.

tks in advance




PB

Well, the simplest way would be to just code everything into the event handlers in the form. But if you need to work with the DB in other forms, or more repetitively, you should concider entity classes with data controllers. These can live in other .vb files so you can keep things clean and keep your data access in one place and the UI in another.

Advantages: the interface of the application can deal with objects and let the data controllers deal with loading and saving the data in those objects. Plus, you then can pass around a structured set of data as a single entity instead of having a clutter of variables. You could expand and create collections of the objects if you had the need. In short it comes down to separation of tiers (presentation, business logic, data access) and code reuse.

Peter
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Work smarter, not harder.