Accessing a database using visual studio NET

Accessing a Database Using Visual Studio .NET Visual Studio .NET's Server Explorer allows you to use a subset of the features contained in the Databases folder of Enterprise Manager. Specifically, Server Explorer allows you to view, create, and edit databases, database diagrams, tables, views, stored procedures, and user-defined functions. In this section, you'll be introduced to Server Explorer and some of its functionality. As you'll see, Server Explorer operates in a similar way to Enterprise Manager, which was covered in Chapter 2. Because of the similarity between Server Explorer and Enterprise Manager, I'll only briefly cover Server Explorer here. You should feel free to experiment with Server Explorer yourself. Your first step is to connect to a database. To do this, you select Tools ➣ Connect To Database. This displays the Data Link Properties dialog box. Figure 3.26 shows this dialog box with appropriate entries to connect to the Northwind database running on the computer JMPRICE-LAP

Accessing a Database Using Visual Studio NET

Visual Studio NET's Server Explorer allows you to use a subset of the features contained

in the Databases folder of Enterprise Manager Specifically, Server Explorer allows you

to view, create, and edit databases, database diagrams, tables, views, stored procedures, and user-defined functions In this section, you'll be introduced to Server Explorer and some of its functionality As you'll see, Server Explorer operates in a similar way to Enterprise Manager, which was covered in Chapter 2 Because of the similarity between Server Explorer and Enterprise Manager, I'll only briefly cover Server Explorer here You should feel free to experiment with Server Explorer yourself

Your first step is to connect to a database To do this, you select Tools ➣ Connect To Database This displays the Data Link Properties dialog box Figure 3.26 shows this dialog box with appropriate entries to connect to the Northwind database running on the computer JMPRICE-LAP

Figure 3.26: Entering database details using the Data Link Properties dialog box

Once you've entered your database details, your second step is to click the Test

Connection button to verify the database connection details Click the OK button once your test succeeds

Once you've connected to the database, you can view things such as the tables You can also retrieve and modify rows in the tables You can drill down to the tables in the

database by clicking the Add icon in the tree in Server Explorer, and you can retrieve the rows from a table by clicking the right mouse button on the table in the tree and selecting Retrieve Data From Table in the pop-up window Figure 3.27 shows the rows from the Customers table

Figure 3.27: Viewing the rows in the Customers table using the Server Explorer

You can enter SQL statements by clicking the Show SQL Pane button in the toolbar, as shown in Figure 3.28

Figure 3.28: Entering a SQL statement

You can build SQL statements visually by clicking the Show Diagram button in the toolbar and selecting columns from the table, as shown in Figure 3.29 As you can see, I've selected the ContactName, CompanyName, and CustomerID columns from the Customers table

Figure 3.29: Building a SQL statement visually

You can view the properties of a column in a table by clicking the right mouse button over the column and selecting Properties from the pop-up window Figure 3.30 shows the properties of the CustomerID column of the Customers table

Figure 3.30: Properties of the CustomerID columns

You've only scratched the surface of the Server Explorer in this section If you have VS .NET, you should feel free to experiment with the Server Explorer-that's the best way to learn