Thats a great intro, I am familiar with hex but didn't understand how the operator worked. I will read up on Boolean Algebra and Discrete Math as you suggest. I would like to know more but understand that this is beyond the forum. Thanks for your guidance. Regards Wayne Phipps ____________ Time is the greatest teacher... unfortunately, it kills all of its students View my Blog

You could create a base class that contains just Id and Name, and create subclasses for each data type. The base class could contain methods for getting data from each subclass. For example: public int GetInt32() { ConfigurationItemInt32 item = this as ConfigurationItemInt32; if (item == null) { throw new ApplicationException("Item is not an Int32 value."); } return item.Value; } --- single minded; short sighted; long gone;

It often helpfull to have another persons perspective on the situation. Many thanks for your comments. They were indeed helpfull Regards Wayne Phipps ____________ Time is the greatest teacher... unfortunately, it kills all of its students View my Blog

Items like this don't, in my experience, create major design issues. Larger business rules such as (and I'm making this up) "Child record can only be entered if Parent record field 'hasChild' is checked" tend to be what cause more problems from a design perspective if you hard code them. You might later decide you want to determine whether a parent has a child based on whether or not there are actually any child records related to a parent record, so such a validation would be done more at the database level (I hope I'm not being to obscure here). Simple "sanity checking", so to speak, won't create major design flaws that will cause you to have to start over. You might have to tweak the patterns you are using, but there is not a lot of danger in doing so and will in all liklihood be necessary. In practice I almost always just add the basic validation to both the client and server (or just the form in winforms) without providing some larger design structure for it. That's me though. I'm sure there are other opinions. ;-) -Matt ------------------------------------------ The 3 great virtues of a programmer: Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. --Larry Wall

I agree with Andrew, I think that would be the best way to solve this requirement. You can override the method of sayhello of base class and implement it in the child class Regards, Jaiprakash M Bankolli

Thanks for that, maybe i'll download the SDK Regards Wayne Phipps ____________ Time is the greatest teacher... unfortunately, it kills all of its students LearnVisualStudio.Net

Using a DataTable is rather inefficient with lots of overhead you don't need for a simple state machine and what could be done using simple state variables. Store your result in a variable just like you do for your controls you dropped onto the form in the designer. Read the operands from the form, calculate, and store the result in the variable. If you want to remember all the results use a growable list like ArrayList or Stack. A stack is what your more advanced calculators use to store previous results, and stacks are what are typically used by calculators to evaluate expressions. You can find lots of information on the web about evaluating expressions to perform calculations. Even if you want to stick with using a DataTable add a column for metadata about the operands and/or operators you have stored in the DataRows. You could, for example, push the result of a calculation into a new DataRow with information that states whether the data is an operand, operator, or result. This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. Software Design Engineer Developer Division Sustained Engineering Microsoft [My Articles] [My Blog]

OK, in that case, I'd always create the return value first, default it to the worst case scenario ( and never create a variable that I don't assign to ), and then I'd prefer switch to if statements where-ever possible, and if my switch statements are getting too big, think about if I can use OO or at least extra levels of call stack depth to factor some of that out. Christian I have several lifelong friends that are New Yorkers but I have always gravitated toward the weirdo's. - Richard Stringer

There are several things you could do. The DataTable is a damn heavy object which is relatively slow compared to other data structures. This is the price you pay for the complexity of the class. So your first thought should be about another datacontainer. If you have relationships to other tables, a primary key set or active views on the datatable: Remove them, make your operation and readd. This way many checks while you update your data will be left out. Also try to call BeginLoadData() and EndLoadData(). I dont know if it increses performance in updates (as it does while adding) but its worth a try.

This is certainly "acceptable", however, you might ask yourself "what is the benefit?". Considering that your DataTable and ColumnNumber fields appear to be instance variables, there's no reason when you need that specific column name you can't just call it directly as in DataTable.Columns[ColumnNumber].ColumnName. If what you want is a short cut method, create some methods like this (that aren't properties). private string GetColumnNameAt( int index ) { if( DataTable.Columns[index] != null ) return DataTable.Columns[index].ColumnName; } private void SetColumnNameAt( int index, string name ) { if( DataTable.Columns[index] != null ) DataTable.Columns[index].ColumnName = name; } Let me know if you need clarification. Best Regards. -Matt ------------------------------------------ The 3 great virtues of a programmer: Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris. --Larry Wall

Stuart van Weele wrote: Search the PC manufacturer's web site The manufacturer went bust about a year ago. Anyway i'm not aware that any manufacturer would normally post windows Dlls on thier site. Jeremy Falcon wrote: You sure? The retail version of Windows Me installs them by default Yeah but he's had the PC a couple of years and now he's let his kids start using it, maybe someone didn't think they were important and deleted them, i've searched the HD for any cabs WIN_X.CAB and there's none to be found. Jeremy Falcon wrote: what if you just install the service pack update for IE6? Done that, even tried a repair on IE but made no difference. But I think i'll take a look at the restore CD in more detail. It may even be an ISO image. I think I had an ISO image editor... I think this needs more investigaton on my part Daniel Turini wrote: You can try using a friend's CD. You can try using a P2P network (argh! I didn't say that I may know someone who once had Windows ME, I've already email'd them and am waiting a reply. Everyone, Thanks for your thoughts I think thats enough to investigate. Regards Wayne Phipps ____________ Time is the greatest teacher... unfortunately, it kills all of its students LearnVisualStudio.Net

1 - because it's sooooo 2003 ... :| Maximilien Lincourt Your Head A Splode - Strong Bad

Thanks for the reply Bruce, iv'e just worked out how to execute stored procedures in VB.Net after downloading a code sample from the MS website. http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnvssamp/html/vbcs_UseStoredProcedures.asp I also downloaded the Sql Server Online Books in which I read bits about stored procedures. At the time of my last posting I had heard to them but only in the context of storing user defined queries so thanks for your help. http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinfo/productdoc/2000/books.asp I had to 'tweak' the sample code to get it to work and used a combination of the sample code, online books and your tip but got there in the end. The above links may help anyone else who ends up in the same situation. Again, thanks for you help. Regards Wayne Phipps - AKA BusterG