I think you hit the nail on the head, reading is key but application is more important. I seem to have a hard time adapting what I am reading unless it is blindingly obvious. What are the sites with programming puzzles that you are referring to. I have been writing code for almost 17 years now in various languages and platforms but I discovered Patterns just months ago (though I suspected their existence for years)and I am slowly realizing that the vast majority of my applications were a horrible implementation of MVC and Active Record patterns. I think I am a voracious reader but in the past I did not want to read anything related to programming or design but I am trying to change that. A good mentor seems to be extremely hard to find . Again thanks for your time

Thank you . Unfortunately the web seems to be a rather disparate source of information with more biases than useful information so I did not have much luck .I just finished the Heads First Patterns book and now I got the GoF book and intend to read it soon. Thanks for the info re Garbage collection

Thank you for your comments. I had no idea that GC uses some form of Lazy scheduling. Any pointers on documentation that would guide me towards the accepted standards for .Net programming?

I am trying to learn better development practices so I would gratified if somebody could confirm what I see as well as show me the ideal replacement for this code. Issues with the code 1) Sending in a SQL statement seems to be invitation for SQL injection 2) Exception handling seems to have been done exclusively so that the end user never sees a problem and nothing else 3) The Dispose statements seem to be useless . Now is it good practice to open and close database connections , I have been reading elsewhere about using the Singleton pattern for database connections which in some cases do leave the connection open. Why is it essential to use dispose for the objects that were declared inside the function ? We know that they will be returned to the GC as soon as the function exits.