creating a quotation (estimate) system and saving to a access database, but cant get passed on how to save the quote and multiple line items.

[Jonathan1994]

i have created a windows forms app in vb.net and have created lots of databases, everything works for now however, I do need help as my brain has bottlenecked lol,

I want to create a quote (estimate) with multiple line items "from my ietems database in access " this then saves to a database for record purposes that can be searched within my application, would like to have the option to double click on a quote from a "previouse quotes" table to viev the full quote and line items.

Your help will be highly appreciated.

Regards
Jonathan

 

[jmcilhinney]

What's the actual problem you would like our help solving? There's lots of information out there about using ADO.NET to work with databases. We can't really guess what your issue is or give you an entire course. Please be as specific as possible about your issue: what exactly are you trying to achieve, how are you trying to achieve it and what happens when you try?

 

[Jonathan1994]

hi There, Thank you for your reply

my application in short is working fine except when saving a quotation (Estimate) witch consists of any amount of items that was selected with quote number to save to a database,

My question would be , How would i go about saving the quote information Client name etc with the added items (ietems can be up to 100 line items with totals ) exactly like a Point of sales system. But i would like to keep simplicity with access databases. i have looked far and wide on the net with no luck.

My thinking witch is dangerous is that each quote would be a new database? however that would not work as this would be costly in terms of storage.

or am i overthinking this lot.

Regards
Jonathan

 

[jmcilhinney]

am i overthinking this lot.

You clearly are if you haven't found relevant information because there's loads out there. All you're asking how to do is save data to a database and that may be the most widely covered topic around. Just look for information on that. You are likely including a whole bunch of keywords that are completely irrelevant, thus excluding relevant results. What the data represents is irrelevant to how you save it. It sounds like what you need is two tables with a one-to-many relationship, where one quote record is related to one or more items. That's something that's been done a million times and there's plenty of information about designing the database and interacting with the data. In general, you would probably want two DataTables to contain the data, probably in a DataSet to maintain the relation, and then use two data adapters to save the data. Once you can do the basics, you'll probably want to add a transaction, to ensure that either the parent and child data are both saved or neither is.

It's also worth noting that ADO.NET works basically the same way no matter the database you're using. You just need to change the set of types you use. For instance, you might learn about ADO.NET using types from the System.Data.SqlClient namespave for SQL Server, e.g. SqlConnection and SqlDataAdapter. If you then want to use an Access database, the structure of the code remains unchanged but you would use types from System.Data.OleDb instead, e.g. OleDbConnection and OleDbDataAdapter. The corresponding types are still used in exactly the same way though, so ADO.NET providers are basically interchangeable.