Sequel server 2005 is a pretty straight forward install, and if there are issues you can fix from the posts i,ve seen so far on the thread. but the following knowledge might help.
IF your using the express edition of sql server it does not come with the management studio, it is just the engine, but can be worked with using other IDE like visual studio.
my advice is get the standard edition of sql server and follow the rest of the suggestions from the guru

SAP is in full use in Nigeria, most multi - national companies and Governments implement SAP solutions ERP(Accounting, Human resource, Project management etc), in Nigeria any implemetation of a ERP system falls whithin the coffers of SAP, Oracle and Microsoft DYnamics with Oracle taking the lead. for those of you thinking of studying for a SAP cert its a way to go, SAP is expanding its marketing focus in Nigeria and the company i work for Southbridge Enterprise System (SAP Partner Company) is driving that market growth for the company.

understanding how ERP and Buisness intelligence works, and getting handy with (sql server, oracle and MaxDB) wld do you good. in due course we would engage a handfull of SAP experts as the need arises.

Begining programing comes with some unexplainable level of excitment and thrill. As a young programmer i am always curious in showing off to my friends how i could build my own brick game on my IBM PS/II system, and ever since then rolling out new stuff always had a burst in my emotions, and then there was COM, Java, OOP and .Net. I naturally started as a C, C++ programmer but lost it when i realzed vb 6.0 could make cool GUI that ii used to create various engineering models and calculation solutions as a mechanical engineering sophomore. From the cafe where i hang with a bunch of IT techies around my neighbourhood, to standing in front of some of the most high ranking Government and Buisness proffessionals demonstrating different applications from various module of ERP to custom solution, ive come to realize after all these years, that software is a meteoring field of play, and nobody i mean nobody can be a guru. You think your a guru, i thought i was, check this out. In all my years of COM, ATL, CLR, XML, SQL and OOP, i was thrilled when i saw a demo from a 18 year old kid - using windows presentation foundation, SIlver light, expression web and the VS 2005. He knew nothing about COM but understood a little OOP basics like inheritance.

You see technology never waits and so a guru today might mean a oldie next week, i used to walk and smile at my self when ever i remeber my mastery of COM back then, today i engage project with even more excitment because i dont have to bother about dll hell, and so i build components and update them as often as i would without worrying for any conflict like in my COM days. I used to write extensive scripts against sql injection for application security, but with robust RDBMS like sql 2000 and sql 2005 and distributed computing i could encapsulate my data access and buisness rules in to various forms of object ensuring a high level app security and data integrity. you see u keep learning, and u only become a programmer when you've satisfied a technical client with a fully commissioned product that has successfully run for at least 6 months.

i work for a company called Southbridge enterprise system and i happen to be the solutions architect for the firm, over the years we,ve been involved with the Government and private sector, i love to share my experience with those who really want to learn the art of s/d, no codes to share but ample walk through that wld help build your passion for a carrier in s/d maybe for the students i can offer internship from time to time with good pay and a lot of experience in the offer.

just take it easy with the guru stuff, software knowledge humbles the expert.

between vb6 and .net is pretty large sea, but if you are familiar with vb6 you'll have a ferry ride across, like ig said its object oriented that means a different paradigm for development, but the strength that it draws from the wealth of OOP is worth the migration. join the bandwagon

seun apart from the fact that you put up a great site like this that has help me in many ways and now this, your such a great guy, sometimes i wonder what you look like. Actually im in a turning point in my life right now and i think what you just did has jolted me even further to taking what i presumed to be a wreckless decision.

i used to think of what wld be the nxt thing apart from the current technologies now, and the answer has always been a torrent of new technologies, so much to learn in computers and software dev. means so much more possibilities in enterprise solutions. and in a developing country like ours it means so much more opportunities.

for you to understand OOP, first you have to have a primer knowledge of proframming and software development in procedural form and why the concept of OOP was initiated. As softwares became more complex issues like maintaining the software and upgrading the software (maintainability and scalability) became of major concern to developers. OOP provides a slotuion to that and many other problems it solves. OOP also allows for reusabilty based on the concept of encapsulation and abstraction, OOP also brings the advantage of extensibilty based on the function of inheritance and seamless robust functionality based on polymorphism. There is a thread were @Parosky gave a very detailed explanation on OOP it would be very helpfull to you guess you take the pains and look for it it is here somewhere.

Let me give you a programming scenario were OOP is of great use.
say you work for an engineering software company, your company produce software that perform many engineering calculations, now if 90% of the softwares you design would need to do some form of algebraic factorisation and say your company produces many variety of these software, wouldnt it be painstaking to continue to write the same factorization code for say 50 different products. With OOP you can just author an object of class factorize, compile it as a dll or better yet an assembly and all you do is create a reference to the class from were ever you want to implement it and call the factorise function.

Abstract Class

Public Class Factorisation

Public variable1 As Integer

'Declare other variables

Public Function factorise(ByVal Variable As Integer, , ) As Integer

'Implement Factorisation algorithm here

End Functio

End Class

The class above authored in visual basic .net is quite a very simple class (do not copy my style for declaring properties), now imagine that the factorise function was more complex say 200 lines, wont a class really help here. now to implement this you just go in a breeze.

Implementing Abstract Class in vb.net

Sub Implement()

Dim MyFactor As New Factorisation
Dim Value as Integer

Value = MyFactor.Factorise(variable1, , )

End Sub

Now thats all you need to call this function any time you want to use it any were. got to go see my mum would have said more sorry

software development has never been a trivial task, just like any other proffession there is always an entry level making things quite welcoming and comfortable for newbies. I began programming with basic at a very tender age, my first pay off with the language was when i was in the university, i would say that vb helped in my compounding accademic success, ever since ive stuck to the language and today im earning a living from my ability to programm in that language.

All .Net languages are borne equal says Microsoft including VB.Net, and today vb has become a full blown OOP offering in the market, in my opinion for those programming on the microsoft path i think the real task is getting aquainted with the .Net frame work and its core classes, like earlier posts its imortant to be able to use ur software skill to develop real time application thats when you begin to learn software development, important issues like interface options (rich, thin or smart client), deployment and packaging issues, software scalabilty (assemblies organization), Security and maintainance, these are the issues that would actually affect your paycheck, not wether you use c++ or java, the issue is delivering a software solution that satisfies a buisness need and adds value and profits to the enterprise.

having the required passion for s/d is quintessential to the lot, and is best achieved by sticking to what you love, if its basic like most people, then be it, if you become really good in it it'll change your lifestyle, i wonder if our friend here is actually a good c,c++ programmer like he claims, for with the compiler structure that comes with C i wonder how one can be used to making so much typos.

barcodes can be misterious sometimes, but a carefull look at the barcode system sort of demistifies the whole lot. creating and reading barcode is quite easy for a programmer regardless ur language.

let me focus on reading barcodes, to read a bar like you know you need a barcode reader, now the problem wit barcode reader is that programmers often wonder if the read text would be displayed on the control with the focus automatically with no code interfacing. Well the answer is yes, earlier barcode devices or scanners were dificult to incomperate into software because of lenghty code, the thing is these devices lacked something.

What did they lack? There is a device known as a wedge, it is rendered as either a hardware or a software, the wedge device acts as an interface between the barcode and the system converting hits from the barcode as if it were inputs frm the keyboard and tricks the computer to accept input from the barcode as if someone was typing the text on the key board, also at the end of the text read the wedge passes the enter key to the system allowing for automatic processing of the read barcode text. The good news is that you could purchase a barcode that comes integrated with a wedge device all in one, just check or ask the purchaser for that kind of barcode reader, or if your are supplied with a barcode already without a wedge device you could download the software (google it) and install on your client system better yet you can bootsrap the wedge sofware with your application .exe file for easy deploy, in my own opinion you dont need lenghty code or abstract classes just to read input from a barcode, hope ill get my cut if this works.lol

its reinforcing i would say to hear these opinions, and it is true that its not a programmers fault. environment bugs are most often subtle but could have great hits on performance when they become an issue. The case with our client was beautifully settled, and DST has been disabled were applicable throughout the network.

with so much ado about the new energy bill in the US and its implication on the daylight saving time, i felt obliged in pursuing clearity. Ive sparingly been over the term DST of course when setting up a new system and occasionally as it pops up on my computer during march requesting for a command to adjust my time. Ignorant i would say as ive always said yes to the prompt never actually knowing what it was all about.

last year i had a major problem with a software the company i work with developed, its an inventory management software developed for an oil company here in nigeria, i was responsible for the develpoment of the transaction class (an object of class transaction that kept track of transaction details with date and time values), its a requirement that the company be able to track the movement of collected items through out the enterprise. Then came the case of the Cisco Router 600 series delema, the item was missing from the stores, supposedly collected by 10am by one of the ITD staff and entered in the system, the meticulous personnel took note of the time the item was collected on a wall clock on the wall, but the system transaction object refrencing the system clock which has been adjusted by the auto adjust daylight savings time said otherwise, this time 11am.

During routine audit it was found out that the system did not collect enough information to pass the router for audit test, so the router was traced using the transactions report, traced to the personnel that collected the router, the audit guys began to ask questions, the meticulous personnel was adamant the he had collected the router at 10am and not 11, but what the auditors had was the report from the system having his name and employment details as the receiver, to cut the long story short the guy almost lost his job. the audit guys relied on the transaction report because they've used it successfully on various occassion, we did not get any formal system integrity complain since the issue was some how settled but ive been puzzled ever since why the time changed.

i got to know about the DST some weeks back, it occurs at the begining of spring in temperate regions, during this period there are shoter days so the  normal time is increased by an hour to account for the changes, it is said that the change helps in the conservation of electricity supply, so the system time in windows automatically adjusts to the DST setting durring spring about march, april, adding one extra hour to the original sytem time, this setting is a default with windows and has to be disabled to cancel the effect.

As i write this im still yet to develope an WMI script to automatically disable the auto dalight saving time setting accross a network which would be adopted for all our clients(any one with syntax would be invaluable please), such subtle environment bug almost cost someone his job i resent, on the downside i wonder how my company will present the case to our client in question. so i ask was it a programmers fault or som system engineers headache. After all DST is not in effect in this region. hope this doesnt affect my paycheck.

thanks for the correction, i would like to say it was not out of ignorance but some kind of typo.

as an electronicd engineer you should be familiar with databases and there uses, oracle dbms is one of the market offering for a rdbms (relative database management system) application. for an electrical engineer you would be working with databases more often than normal. many of the realtime applications that you would be exposed to if you land a premium job with one of them oil companies work with operations intelligence data gathered from a repository that would happen to be a database and oracle most often come to be a favorable choice for most enterprise.

as a mechanical engineer ive used microsoft's offering for a dbms app (sql server 2000) to build engineering based enterprise wide solutions like a computerised maintenance management software (cmms), this software handles the huge task of maintainance for engineering department and relies heavily on the back end support of the database (be it oracle or sql server), this task is a major expectation from all mechanical engineers and the software combines on hand mechanical engineering knowledge set that is put together to form objects that intelligently act on the database as collected by the system, and saves the company millions of naira by providing them with the abilty to foracast failures and plan for maintenance activity as appropriate.

i can enumerate hundreds of reasons why a dbms is core to your pursuit, of course it should be all in the box, by that i mean you should have a front end technology skill set to make sense of it all.

good luck

hey paroski, good looking over my shoulder, i intentionally did that didnt wanted to crowd our good friend with all them exception syntax, i really did expect u to comment on that code snippet though. interesting how u set the recordset object to nothing thus releasing its consumed resources.

and to sylyjab its good thing you get your feet wet with the database object using ado on vb6.0, though .Net uses a different paradigm it still builds on the basics of legacy Ado, so dont listen to people that'l tell u its a waste of time using vb6.0. there is a tool called the data environment designer on vb6.0 great tool for manipulating recordsets, similar to the way ado.net does. you could google it to get ur hands on.

good to see ur on track, but you need to learn how to create robust code and remember like i said the ADO object methods throws a lot of unhandled error that you'll have to account for, try and add the following bold statements to paroski's code to handle generic exceptions.

sub AddNewItem
On Error Resume Next
myrs.addnew
'perform add operations here
myrs.update
end sub

on ur development environment make sure the database file is copied to a path that is identical to the path you used for development. it is better you create ur datadabe file directly in the C:\ directory, since the mydocument user name varies for different system, using that same path would generate connections errors since the user of the developmet machine might be using i diff name thus affecting the folder. a more proffessional way is to script the deployment of the access database.

u have to be specific though, but i think ur connecting via the wrong engine and maybe the wrong object. try this:

connect to access using the ADO Object, to use it you must add a refrence to it from the project menu

use the microsoft jet 4.1 engine to connect to access

to ensure update operations on ur recorset you must use Optimistic setting via the advanced tab on the dialogue box that shows you the ADO prefferences.

note ADO internal algorithm for CRUDE operation is not very reliable, using SQL performs better but requires learning the syntax, but it will scale well for small applications. also make sure your running on the correct OS earlier versions of windows 98 do not fully support the ADO object effectively.
if ur more specific ill tell u exactly what to do to get u up and runing with access

what gbengaijiot said about programming i would say is really true, it is fun but like he rightly said its realy not for the faint hearted. its also good to note note that no programming language is actually easy. you see as a software developer which u'll eventually become after intense tutoring and practice except you u'll be programming against the hobyst path or solving complex scientifical problems, the need for you to be able to provide a buisness solution is what realy matters, each language has its offering on different techniques and dont be fooled to the folly of an easy to use language, in reality there is none.

ive been a vb programmer for 2 years now and i tell u leveraging to real world scenarios need a lot of effort and commitment, some people would say vb is a easy language, well guess i would have met stardom six months into using that platform, there is always more to learn from the software development perspective, its dynamic.

all the best as you become a seasoned programmer.

quite an interesting thread, i think if we could get the average nigerian connected to the internet, make internet affordable for the average nigerian, though nitel did a poor job as per the infrastructure, but what im saying is get 30million nigerians up and browsing at the comfort of their own home and theb there would exist a "huge internet market" theyll talk about it on cnn and the rest would follow. the project topic for e-pay would be quite an interesting adventure for u mimi83, give it a go, and lets start making things work here its up to all of us naijas.

its good to hear experienced developers share there thoughts on the effects of the meteoring change in IT technology and the joys they bring. i agree to the fact that new technology platforms are needed in other to provide solutions to the changing buisness requirement of enterprises and companies like microsoft are putting in tremendous effort to keep up with these changes.

like earlier comments it might heart breaking to migrate to a new tech. but the reward far outweighs the efforts

open source is good for server side networking technology in support of interoperability and seamless integration, and Microsoft has recently released its source code for server side technology, though it goes with a token but its a step in the right direction. but the question is how much can you as a developer use these open standard techniques as exposed by linux and its flock. For the developer interested in programming against a buisness model using standards based coding technique (Dubbed Patterns and Practice) by microsoft, wouldnt it be appropriate to have an open standard that tells you like a standards code will the best way possible to solve a problem and make profits? Are we trying to reinvent the wheel when we are suppose to be making good race tyres. still an advocate of open standard.

share your thoughts

ever since the birth of the 8086 and the IBM ps/2 microsoft has grown to be an indespensable player in the software industry. for both ethusiasts and hobyists alike the platform of software development has witness a meteoring change from COM down to .Net and the Whidbey project (Visual Studio 2005). As these technologies improve ive come to realize that microsoft has taken us on a journey, for developers that have been here on the microsoft path for a while would agree that it has been quite a journey. and as i come to realize the path it thus brings more clearity to the vision of microsoft.

from API's to activeX to distributed computing to COM, the .net frame work and now vs2005 and notably the microsoft robotics framework-intended to get developers closer to custom hardware. All this reveals the path to glory for microsoft developers as it marks the birth of wide spread OEM(Original Equioment Manufacturing) industries. The question is, is microsoft making technology open standard rather than open source? which of these do we actually need here in the third world like they say? ill comment more on this as the thread goes on and would love to know what you guys think

Dag
Microsoft Evangelist

sounds interesting but the truth is you dont need a developer with the knowledge of wall street to get ur software running. in software development there's what we call work/buisness process, and from that a conceptual and phycal model can be conceived for any software needs. ive done accounting apps and yet im a mechanical engineer, so you need a seasoned programmer rather than a programmer with wall street savvy you seldom find them. if your up for a software requirement analysis you could reach by phone 08033132174 or by email: tolofaridagogo@yahoo.com, i live in port harcourt.

Once a S/W analysis is successfull the software follows naturally.

hello sir; just read ur thread, im a software developer in port harcourt and would want to help you develop your software needs, i just finished developing an inventory management system for the nigerian agip oil company for their ITD stores, you could contact me immediately: 08033132174

Warm regards
Dagogo Tolofari
tolofaridagogo@yahoo.com

hi ladipo sorry for my delayed response, i saw ur post and i would rather say the technology your looking at are now obsolete, com and active-x are things that are implented diferently on the .net frame work now.
the .net frame work hosts a whole lote of classes and leverages that to the average .net user to provide robust code, even the calling of windows API is against best pactrice (Microsoft patterns and practices Nov 2003), although pInvoke still does the trick.

ive recently completed an inventory management system for Nigeria Agip Oil company, first with a departmental stores manager version and an enterprise wide order management system with thin client interfaces across the company intranet. i have a couple of solutions in my portfolio, and about how i transform buisness processes into a conceptual model and then physical model and develop a software system comprised of a back end server and usable robust interfaces, i guess we should leave that for an interview date.

hello ladipo im a developer as well i use the word devloper there cause im trying to be technology specific, im more of a windows application developer rich/smart client, i use microsoft tools exclusively and well versed in ADO.NET, SQL Server, relational database design, data modelling, OOP, and Enterprise Solution Architecture, i fluently leverage my said skills to ASP.NET, but frankly when it gets beyond implementing a thin client interface to my backend for scalabilty and availabilty reasons i dont get too passionate about web design. My basic development platform is .Net and my dev lang is vb.net.
Im an advocate of the buisness of software and strongly beleive in the profitability inherent, from my research its all about the skill, then the inovation, and yes the marketing and the break through follows. Ive a couple of persuasive sales persons who can operate humbly under good directions, and me i earnestly seek an expertise partner so we could collaborate and put down solution architectures for the nigerian enterprise.
my name is Dagogo and i live in port harcourt you could contact me via mail at :tolofaridagogo@yahoo.com.

what bossman said is right, to be more explicit, low level and high level language is like pigeon english and good english, as a nigerian you understand pigeon which is the basic language so u could do local stuff like go to yaba and pick up some cool okrika with good bargains as opposed to say a whity who could ony speak good english. in this case low level can be said to be broken and high level good english. languages like assembly language are the machine language it self, but languages like c encapsulates the complexities of assembly language into whats known as the c libraries, c is actualy a low level language and it does lot of low level stuff.

i actually used c to implement an automated weighing system for a local butcher, it was a project though but u could only do stuff like that with a language thats much close to the low level interfaces. hope this primes you.

vfp is an acronym for visual fox pro, thats a database programming platform designed by microsoft for departmental level programming. proffessional using this technology are quite scarce personally i dont use it extensively but its got great feature and a very robust database engine as well, whats interesting is that microsoft continues to support the technology i hear that there is a release for version 9. well for my departmental programming needs i use vb 6.0 and access it works great for me, but if i had the time i would really be digging into fox pro as itll even be supported in the future by microsoft while vb6.0 goes into the legacy basket. i use vb.net and c# for serious programming.

hi people
the lot posted so far is a good primer for database connectivity, but going up from here to where the technology is heading u really have to understand what microsoft wants u to know. OOP is hoopla of the developers world and all that has been said is an implementation of certain classes represented in the ADO Object model. so its all in the model, and the model for ADO is smply
1.connection object
2.command object
3.recordset object

all conn to a database wld basically obey this model, like it has been correctly outlined in earlier postings, if u look carefully ull observe the truth about the model. so just get the model into ur head and ur good to go, study the properties and methods exposed by these objects and ull better understand what they do best and get intouch with oop its the koko for developers.

hi paroski i really really need those books on mcsd would deeply appreciate it if you send them to my email add:
tolofaridagogo@yahoo.com. i would like to commend u too for ur gesture. ive some cool .net books for any one intersted, including fransesco belena's programming visual basic .net 2003, great stuff. pls wld need the books again thanks

i would agree with those that outline the need for skill, but would also want to mention that experience is a criteria for certification success but it depends. well im new so let me say hello to you all "Hello". u see the IT industry is meteoring in its pace, it like being a vb6.0 programmer with 5 years experience and opting to get certified on the mcsd.net path, u see when new products are released there is more to it that meets the odinary eye, but em sometimes it just an upgrade, but if unlucky it might be a whole paradigm change like in .Net

Certificatins to be industry specific are invaluable ill choose it to a degree, but the question is, would i be an executive and employ someone without a degree that has a certification? well it depends. i read an article on a blog site www.joelonsoftware.com about the importance of skill and passion, and sometimes i wonder why bill gates would leave the glory of the CEO office for some CSA possition. my answer is that there is a need for skill and certification makes a much louder statement than a degree. microsoft would say "prove ur skills" it sure does count to have a cert.

in nigeria there is this hoopla of certification these days, but people seem to froget the word Proffessionalism, thats what employers want, Mtn doesnt want to employ someone who crammed ccna to manage its valuable servers, its the skill that count, certification is just the dressing and u need it. ive heard og people who get certified and could not pass simple interviews. get the skills get experience get certified - ur getting a job.