Does this[^] helps? जय हिंद

No problem and the follow up was useful! Even though I rarely use Access, it's always good to have understanding how it's developping. Thanks! The need to optimize rises from a bad design.My articles[^]

Thanks. The application I'm working with uses Access, so I think I need to use IIF with ISNULL() to make it work with this software, but that's exactly the idea I was looking for. I wanted something that could work quickly, without iterating through the rows of the table or doing anything else in the code. Thanks.

polishprogrammer wrote: but I have not been able to get the Merge method to work Could you post what you've done so far and what's the problem. Otherwise it's hard to give any hints. The need to optimize rises from a bad design.My articles[^]

Thanks again, Mika, for your help. For your information, this is the solution-suggested by someone at another site - that worked: SELECT Details.*, r1.VE FROM Details LEFT JOIN [SELECT r1.* FROM Results r1 INNER JOIN (SELECT SerialNumber, Max(ID) As maxID FROM Results GROUP BY SerialNumber) AS r2 ON r1.SerialNumber = r2.SerialNumber AND r1.ID = r2.maxID]. AS r1 ON (Details.SN = r1.SerialNumber); The actual query I'm using is a bit more complex than this as it involves several more conditions in the LEFT JOIN statement and some more or less simple WHERE queries to limit the information returned from the Details table, but the basic idea of this query does solve the problem I had described. Thanks again.

Thanks, but I don't need just the latest VE, but the latest VE tied to that serial number. The VE field is simply a text field that can be PASS, FAIL, or an empty string; there is nothing remotely unique about it. I need the VE value, but it only matters insofar as it's "attached" to the serial number.

Yes, it will. "The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon "Not only do you continue to babble nonsense, you can't even correctly remember the nonsense you babbled just minutes ago." - Rob Graham

System.Diagnostics.Process.Start Eslam Afifi

You may want to take a look at this blog post. http://nirandas.com/blog/index.php/ways-to-set-short-cut-keys-for-controls-on-a-windows-forms-net-application/[^] HTH Nirandas, a developer from India. http://www.nirandas.com

Thank you. That was the answer I needed. I have implemented the hash table into the application and it does the trick. The application I'm working with is well established and this particular feature, which happens to be a search for a serial number based on a bar code value, is a specific request by one customer. I can't redo the application simply to fit one customer need, and so I wanted something that works with the existing application architecture, which you have provided. Thanks.

Thanks. I wound up just changing the names of the fields in one of the data tables and that worked for the data binding issue. Regarding the repetitive fields, well, it takes the 3 fields to uniquely identify a record, but I want to separate the data into two tables because the information in these particular tables aside from the primary key fields is quite different and used in different contexts, for different purposes. I suppose I could create a lookup table that would link an ID to the three fields and both tables could reference the look up table, but, well, that would require more software revision because the ServiceDetails table is a recent addition to the database in question whereas the SerialNumber table has been used extensively with its current structure for quite some time and I'd have to redo a bit of code to use a modified structure.

I found a solution. Basically, the Jet Engine seems to have problems with translation. To get the correct data, I have to do this: SELECT * FROM TABLE WHERE Date BETWEEN Format(#" + startDate + "#,'mm/dd/yyyy')AND Format(#" + endDate + "#,'mm/dd/yyyy') By setting the format in the SQL statement to United States format, the data seems to come back to me correctly.

Thanks.

It answers the question at face value, more or less. My question had to do more with the mechanism for updating the database from C# code. I brushed up on my SQL a bit this morning and found the ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMNNAME command which works if I always know exactly what column names to add, but I want to automate the process. Basically, I'm look to set up a mechanism that will search all the tables in the database if the software version has changed and compare the table definition for each table in the existing database with the table definition for each and every table in the database that will deploy with the newer version of the software to determine if there are any changes to the database. If so, then I need to execute the ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMNNAME command to add those new fields to the existing database. Now, I can perform this process through some brute force type of programming, where I get the schema for each table in the newer version of the DB, compare it to the scheme for each table in the existing version of the DB, and then update the data accordingly, but if there's a more efficient way to accomplish the task, I would be glad to hear it.

Hello, Basically you could inherit your own ComboBox from System.Windows.Forms.ComboBox: public class SpecialComboBox : System.Windows.Forms.ComboBox { In the classes constructor you have to change the "DrawMode" property: public SpecialComboBox() { this.DrawMode = System.Windows.Forms.DrawMode.OwnerDrawFixed; } Then you have to override "OnDrawItem": protected override void OnDrawItem(System.Windows.Forms.DrawItemEventArgs e) { using(System.Drawing.SolidBrush sb = new System.Drawing.SolidBrush(System.Drawing.Color.Red)) { e.Graphics.DrawString(this.GetItemText(this.Items[e.Index]), e.Font, sb, e.Bounds); } base.OnDrawItem (e); } Note: I only tested it with "DropDownStyle" set to "System.Windows.Forms.ComboBoxStyle.DropDown", and I think behaviour changes then. I think this article[^] covers it up better. Hope it helps! All the best, Martin