dakota97

David, Thanks for the reply. That does make sense, b/c I can still play games that were made with DirectX 7 and 8, so that must be the reason. I'll just have to make sure that I include the references to the DirectX 9b files when I package it up. Thanks again, Chris

Hi all, I'm starting into managed DirectX programming, and I have a simple question. The books and research materials that I have cover DirectX 9b. Now, I know that MS changed some things in moving to 9c in regards to some of the properties and classes that are available. If I write a program using 9b, and someone has 9c installed, are there going to be any issues when they run my program? The main reason I'm asking is b/c I just formatted my development machine, and was going to install 9c when it dawned on me that I'm going to have a hard time compiling my code from my books. So, I figured if I install 9b from the reference CD's, I could at least get the examples to compile and run. But, if they won't work on a computer with 9c installed, then that doesn't do me any good. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance, Chris

Ok, I must've been dyslexic when I first read that reply....lol

Works like a charm. One thing though, it's 3 /// instead of 3 \\\ Thanks for the "tip" Chris

Hi all, Is there a way to add the descriptive text of a custom method that I create, like the ones that appear when you select a method or property from the IDE? Thanks, Chris

Hi all, Ok, I've got a strange one here. I just installed VS 2005 Beta 2 to check out the new features. As we all know, it comes with the .Net framework 2.0 as well. Now, I don't know if this is a bug in the new version or what, but I'm having a problem with messageboxes showing up empty. There's just nothing in them no matter what text I set to be displayed. The OK button doesn't even have "Ok" written on it. I first noticed it when I was showing a friend a point-of-sale program that I wrote using VS.Net 2003. The first few messageboxes that appear had nothing written in them. Then, the third or fourth one that was displayed finally had my text in it. Is this a bug in the new framework, or is it a problem with my installation? I formatted my computer over the weekend and just got everything back up and running, but I've never had this problem before. I resinstalled everything just as I always do, but now I have this strange problem. Has anyone else seen this? Thanks in advance, Chris

Hi all, Is it possible to programatically change the field type in an Access DB? The reason I'm asking is because I found a bug in my program that incorrectly calculates the tax for a sale if the tax rate is in the form of 6.5% or 8.25%. If the tax rate is 6% or 8%, it works fine. I need to put out an update for people who have downloaded my program that will update the field type in the database without losing the existing data. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, Chris

I haven't tested this code, but I believe you should be able to set the data source as follows: 'Initialize the new database connection for the new data source Dim DbConn As New OleDbConnection("Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=MyDatabase.mdb") 'Initialize a new ReportDocument class variable Dim crReportDocument As New ReportDocument 'Initialize the report you are going to use, renaming CrystalReport1 to the name of your report Dim MyReport As New CrystalReport1 'Set the new datasource for the ReportDocument and load the report crReportDocument.SetDataSource(dbconn) crReportDocument.Load(MyReport) I think the only thing that you'll need to be sure of is that the tables fields that the report uses are available in both databases. If not, you'll probably get an error when you view or print the report. Let me know how it works out Chris

Well, I'll put my 2 cents in and say this. In my VB.Net app I used Crystal Reports. I then created some menu items so that the user can select the type of report that they want to display. For example, my app is a retail point-of-sale program (http://www.cgdesign.net/download.asp). For the reports, I gave the user the options to view daily, weekly, and monthly sales reports. For the inventory, I gave them the option to generate reports by customer, product ID, category, and department. So actually I created different reports that pull the corresponding information from the database, based on the menu item that the user selected. One thing I will tell you is that it takes a little time to get used to using Crystal Reports. The best thing I did was to purchase the book Crystal Reports .Net Programming by Brian Bischof (http://www.crystalreportsbook.com). I looked all over for tutorials and help using Crystal Reports, and found that this book is all I needed. I hope this helps you out. Chris

I know this post is a couple months old, but if anyone is still looking for a good tutorial, I myself bought the book "Crystal Reports .Net Programming by Brian Bischof (http://www.crystalreportsbook.com). I can't say enough about this book, as it's helped me figure out how to get around Crystal Reports when designing reports using the wizard or programmatically. The first half of the book gets you familiar with creating your first report. It explains everything is basic terminology so that it's easy to understand. It covers the basics , and then moves into grouping, sorting, calculating running totals, adding subreports, etc. The second half of the book covers all aspects of creating dynamic reports durning runtime. It talks about different ways to retrieve the data from your database, and then how to view them using either the viewer or report document. It disccusses modifying parameters and formulas, anddynamically exporting the report into different formats. For the $30.00 cost of the book, I found it to be well worth it when dealing with Crystal Reports. It's the first and only book that I have found that truely takes to complexity out of usning CR. And, it has exmplaes written in VB.Net, C#, and for ASP.Net so you're pretty much covered.

Hi all, Anyone have any ideas on how I can programmatically check if a field exists in a table in an Access database? I just released the first version of my point-of-sale program (http://www.cgdesign.net/download.asp), and I'm in the process of adding new features for the second version. If a user has information added to the database, I don't want them to lose it. But, if I've changed the database structure, I want to make sure that the new fields are added to their existing database so that no errors ocurr. Theoretically, there should be a way that I can open the database and check each tables for a field or multiple fields. If the fields don't exist, then I should be able to create them in the existing table. I found examples of adding fields to existing tables, but I need to know how to check and see if the field exists first. Any ideas? Thanks in advance, Chris

Nevermind...stupid mistake...I have Option Strict turned off, and when when I declared strVendorId, I declared it as an integer. Originally I was going to make the Vendor Id a number, but I figured if people wanted to put a letter in also, then I should have it as a string...I changed the name of the variable, but not the type...oops!

Wyrd, Got it. Thanks Chris

Himo, The program is asking for the amount of money that the customer gave the user to pay for their order. If the total of the order is $90.00 and the customer gave them $100, then the $100 is the "Amount tendered". When the user types in amount tendered and clicks on the type of payment given (e.g. Cash, Check, etc.) then the program displays the change due back to the customer.

Hi all, Ok, this error just mysteriously appeared out of nowhere, and I have no idea what the problem is. I'm assigning a retrieved Access database value to a variable. The variable is a string, and the database value is text. But, now I'm getting the 'ol "Arithmetic operation resulted in an overflow" error. One problem....I"M NOT DOING ANY ARITHMETIC!!!!! Everything in the program has ran fine, and still runs fine, up until it gets to that line. No clue why, b/c it never did it before. Here's the code: DbConn.Open() DbCommand.CommandText = "SELECT * FROM tblVendor WHERE VName ='" & cmbVendor.Text & "'" DbCommand.Connection = DbConn DbReader = DbCommand.ExecuteReader() If DbReader.Read Then strVendorId = Convert.ToString(DbReader("VendorId")) ' <<--Here's line error line End If DbReader.Close() DbCommand.Dispose() DbConn.Close() Any ideas on what's going on here? Thanks in advance, Chris

Hi all, I need to write one SQL query to retrieve data from 3 different tables. I've joined 2 tables successfully, but how do I get the third in there? SELECT * FROM tblOrders INNER JOIN tblCustomer ON tblCustomer.AccountNum=tblOrders.AccountNum WHERE tblOrders.Voided=False; Thanks in advance, Chris

Himo, Thank you for the feedback. This is the first program that I've written, so I knew that there were going to be things that could be done differently. But, that is why I posted it here so that I could get some feedback. On the setup: I realize that I didn't make the change in the bootstrap, so I'll take care of that. As far as the "Setup completed succesfully", I believe that is indeed standard, but only if you use the setup.exe to install the program. If you use the .msi file to run the installation, then you don't get that message. However, the reason that I included the setup.exe is that the average person isn't going to know what the .msi file is when installing. I don't know if there's a way to suppress the confirmation message in the .exe or not, but I'll check. But, I agree, it is a little annoying. On the program: - Ok, the yellow button ARE annoying. I wanted to make the buttons stand out so that people didn't just see the plain, ordinary control-colored buttons. I'll see if I can come up with another, more appealing color - I'll put the initial login information into a messagebox that is only shown the first time the rogram is run. You're right about having to read the manual. - I can change the "Item #" label to "Prod ID" instead - What suggestions could you give me instead of "Amount tendered" to make it more clear? - I was going to change the "Cancel" button to "Close", but I guess I forgot. No problem. On the Manual: - I'll see what I can do about the image quality. What I wanted to do was at least give the user an idea of the screen that they should be seeing when performing the different functions. I see your point though. - I'm glad that you fel tha tthe manual is clear. It's the first time I've written something like that, and I wanted to make sure that the user could understand how to use the program, without writing a a huge book for the manual. I hate buying software where the manual takes 3 weeks to reae from front to back. Misc: - I agree that the database does need to be secure. The only reason I didn't secure it was because I ran into some problems when I created the receipt and reports. Both items are made using Crystal Reports, and I had issues with the "Login Failed" error when loading the report. I'm working on the code right now that will hopefully eliminate those errors, and will secure the database in the next release here shortly. Again, thank you very much for the critique. If anyone else has any feedback, please do not hesitate to let me know. Thanks, Chris

Ok. 37 people have viewed this post now. Has anyone downloaded and ran my program?

Hi all, First off, I would like to thank all of you who helped me throughout this entire project. A lot of you don't know that you helped me, but for those of you who do, I sincerely thank you for your time and efforts. Ok, on to the good stuff. I have finally finished my first working VB.Net application, and I need some feedback (good or bad). I have created a Point-of-Sale program from scratch over the last 8 or 9 months. Now, obviously I'm not completely finished with it yet, as there are a lot more features that I would like to add, but just haven't had the time to implement. That main thing I wanted was to put together a complete, working program, and get it on the market. However, before I do that, I would like to have some people test it and let me know what they think, and if there are any errors that I've overlooked. As I said, I've been working on this project for quite some time now, and my programming knowledge and skills have definitely grown (if you saw the original code you would see what I mean). Most of the knowledge that I've obtained has been from this very forum, and all of the people that I've come to respect for their programming knowledge. I couldn't have done it without your help. That's about all I have to say right now (since it is 6:00am and I've been finishing things up all night). Please take time to download and check out my program, and PLEASE send me your feedback, as I really need to know the pros and cons about my work. Go to my download page at http://www.cgdesign.net/download.asp and download the appropriate version. Again, thanks to everyone who helped me in gaining the knowledge and experience to become a .Net programmer. Sincerely, Chris

Thanks for your help all, but I figured it out. It wasn't the listview control that was giving me the problem. The problem was when the second form loaded, I was doing some string manipulation, and the index error was from that. I didn't put any code in to handle emtpy strings, and when I tried to insert a character into the string, it couldn't find the index point to insert it. If that makes any sense, then you see my problem....lol Thanks again, Chris

Didn't work. Selectedindex isn't a property of the listview control. It's with the listbox control. I tried changing to a listbox, and rearranging a few things but I need to use the listview control instead. Thanks, Chris

Hi all, I have a really strange thing happening, and I can't for the life of me figure out why. What I have is a listview control set up to display trouble tickets that are stored in my DB. When a user selects a listview item and clicks the VIEW button, it loads another form, enters the information from the DB into the controls of the form, and then displays the form to the user. Now for the the problem. Everything works great until it comes to the part of the code to display the next form. I get the following error: Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the size of the collection. Parameter name: startIndex Here's my complete code for the view button click event: Private Sub btnView_Click(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnView.Click If lstTickets.SelectedItems.Count = 0 Then MessageBox.Show("You must select a ticket to view") Else strSelTicket = lstTickets.SelectedItems(lstTickets.SelectedItems(0).Index).Text Try 'Retrieve the information for the selected ticket DbConn.Open() DbCommand.CommandText = "SELECT * FROM Tickets WHERE TicketNum = '" & strSelTicket & "'" DbCommand.Connection = DbConn DbReader = DbCommand.ExecuteReader 'Populate the text boxes for the next form and display it to the user If DbReader.Read Then strTicketNum = DbReader("TicketNum") strTicketType = DbReader("Type") Dim frmViewTicket As New ViewTicket frmViewTicket.Text = "Details for ticket #" & DbReader("TicketNum") frmViewTicket.txtName.Text = Convert.ToString(DbReader("Name")) frmViewTicket.txtCoName.Text = Convert.ToString(DbReader("CoName")) frmViewTicket.txtAdd1.Text = Convert.ToString(DbReader("Add1")) frmViewTicket.txtAdd2.Text = Convert.ToString(DbReader("Add2")) frmViewTicket.txtCity.Text = Convert.ToString(DbReader("City")) frmViewTicket.txtState.Text = Convert.ToString(DbReader("State")) frmViewTicket.txtZip.Text = Convert.ToString(DbReader("Zip")) frmViewTicket.txtPhone1.Text = Convert.ToString(DbReader("Phone1")) frmViewTicket.txtPhone2.Text = Convert.ToString(DbReader("Phone2")) frmViewTicket.txtPhone1Ext.Text = Convert.ToString(DbReader("Phone1Ext")) frmViewTicket.txtPhone2Ext.Text = Convert.ToString(DbReader("Phone2Ext")) frmViewTicket.txtMobile.Text = Convert.ToString(DbReader("Mobile")) frmViewTicket.txtFax.Text = Convert.ToString(DbReader("Fax")) frmViewTicket.txtEmail1.Text = Convert.ToString(DbReader("Email1")) frmViewTicket.txtEmail2.Text = Convert.ToString(DbReader("Email2")) frmViewTicket.txtContact1.Text = Convert.ToString(DbReader("Contact1")) frmViewTicket.txtContact2.Text = Convert.ToString(DbReader("Contact1")) frmViewTicket.txtDepartment.Text = Convert.ToString(DbReader("Department")) frmViewTicket.txtModel.Text = Convert.ToString(DbReader("Model")) frmViewTicket.txtSerial1.Text = Convert.ToString(DbReader("Serial1")) frmViewTicket.txtSerial2.Text = Convert.ToString(DbReader("Serial2")) frmViewTicket.txtDescription.Text = Convert.ToString(DbReader("Description")) frmViewTicket.txtCategory.Text = Convert.ToString(DbReader("Category")) frmViewTicket.txtResolution.Text = Convert.ToString(DbReader("Resolution")) frmViewTicket.txtEnteredBy.Text = Convert.ToString(DbReader("EnteredBy")) frmViewTicket.txtTimestamp.Text = Convert.ToString(DbReader("Entered")) 'Set the appropriate status for the requested ticket If DbReader("Status") = "Open" Then frmViewTicket.txtStatus.Text = "Pending" Else frmViewTicket.txtStatus.Text = Convert.ToString(DbReader("Status")) End If frmViewTicket.Show() DbConn.Close() Me.Close() Else MessageBox.Show("There was a problem reading the information from the database. Please contact technical support.") End If Catch ex As Exception MessageBox.Show("An error has occured. Please contact technical support with the following message:" & ControlChars.NewLine & ControlChars.NewLine & ex.Message) DbConn.Close() End Try End If End Sub The part the I don't get is that the only thing that I am doing with an index is getting the ticket number of the selected item so that I can insert it into my query statement. I even tried taking out the reference to the index of the selected item, and still nothing. Any ideas? Thanks in advance, Chris

Well, I just found the answer from MS website. Apparently the Express version doesn't include deployment tools. You need at least the standard version.

Hi all, Ok, I just downloaded and installed VB.Net 2005 Express. Where did they put the Setup Wizard to deploy the app? I tried the usual place (Add...New Project...etc.), but there is no Setup Wizard, or any other type of installation project. Any ideas? Thanks in advance, Chris

Hi all, I created my first report using Crystal Reports, and I actually got it to display the correct information from my DB. What I need to know is how I can pass a parameter to it to display only certain records (in this case records that match a certain date). Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, Chris