You can create a datatable entirely in code, add the columns to it, and populate it, then just use it as if you had loaded it from a database. Are you using C# or VB? I'll post a sample when I know which language you like. Lisa Z. Morgan

The good news is, you can do exactly what you are doing now. Porting your application to the web does not impede your ability to query your database for the users' roles and permissions and provide access to the page only if they meet the criteria they would have needed in a Windows application. There are excellent tools in the built-in asp.net membership providers as someone else has posted, but you can also do it just like you are doing now and not have to re-write that part of your code. I work in a web-based environment where we use exactly that sort of thing--roles and permissions and actions linked in SQL2008 tables. Works fine. If you do switch to the built-in role and membership providers in ASP.Net, you will gain some advantages because you can simply check the value of methods like UserIsInRole or IsLoggedIn and so forth, but you can also port your Windows Forms code to check these in the page load event, and redirect them to a page telling them they can't play there if they don't belong. I hope this helps, and good luck with your application. Lisa Z. Morgan

ASP.Net is a set of technologies. Visual Studio, using either C# or VB.Net, is an integrated development environment and toolset for working with ASP.Net technologies. I recommend some of the beginner tutorials. You can build ASP.Net applications using the free Visual Studio Express editions, specifically Visual Web Developer, and use SQL Server Express for your database, all free of charge and with much of the same power as the full versions, at least at the level you'll be starting out. I recommend a site like www.LearnDevNow.com or any of the lovely tutorials found at www.asp.net to familiarize yourself with all of the tools. Good luck! Lisa Z. Morgan Lairhaven Enterprises

I find the LearnDevNow site (www.learndevnow.com) an excellent resource. The videos are produced by the same people who do the AppDev series, and they are well done, timely, and effective. Best of all, the subscription is only $99 per year, which is a bargain! And of course if you are a serious developer, you have to have a Safari Books Online subscription. www.safaribooksonline.com. I have the universal subscription, which at $42.99 per month is a steal the way I go through technical books. And with that subscription, I have *all* the books, on demand, and can, if I choose, download them to PDF or now even mobi for my Kindle (yay!) for an additional fee. An excellent bargain, both of these. Lisa Morgan