Privacy policy. When you create an application that manipulates data in a database, you perform basic tasks such as defining connection strings, inserting data, and running stored procedures. By following this topic, you can discover how to interact with a database from within a simple Windows Forms "forms over data" application by using Visual C or Visual Basic and ADO.
This article demonstrates a simple way to get data out of a database in a fast manner. If your application needs to modify data in non-trivial ways and update the database, you should consider using Entity Framework and using data binding to automatically sync user interface controls to changes in the underlying data. This topic assumes that you're familiar with the basic functionality of the Visual Studio IDE and can create a Windows Forms application, add forms to the project, put buttons and other controls on the forms, set properties of the controls, and code simple events.
If you aren't comfortable with these tasks, we suggest that you complete the Create a Windows Forms app in Visual Studio with Visual Basic tutorial or the Create a Windows Forms app in Visual Studio with C tutorial before you start this walkthrough. In the New database name text box, enter Sales , then choose OK. After a short time, the query finishes running and the database objects are created. The database contains two tables: Customer and Orders. These tables contain no data initially, but you can add data when you run the application that you'll create.
The database also contains four simple stored procedures. Visual Studio creates the project and several files, including an empty Windows form that's named Form1.
Add two Windows forms to your project so that it has three forms, and then give them the following names:. For each form, add the text boxes, buttons, and other controls that appear in the following illustrations.
For each control, set the properties that the tables describe. When your application tries to open a connection to the database, your application must have access to the connection string. This online database creator enables the business of all sizes to build relational databases without any coding and programming skills.
Kohezion is a truly simple database software solution that allows you to create your own online databases in a few easy steps. No programming or special knowledge required. Kohezion gives you the power to collaborate and to share with your team, automate your reports, and upload all your data from different sources fast and easy.
It is a secure and reliable tool that lets you manage and customize your data to your own needs. Want more simple database software programs? Sodadb Simple Online Database — a new approach to online databases. Kirix — easy to use, has the power you need to work with large files and helps you get your work done faster. Brilliant Database — you can develop any database application without the need for any special knowledge or skills.
My Visual Database — another simple development environment databases, without the need for specialists and programming skills.
Axisbase — a popular database system to track whatever kind of information your business deals with. SpeedBase Professional Database — simple database software with a comprehensive range of options to build your own database adjusted to your own needs. Microsoft Access — you know this solution. File Amigo — an absolutely easy and free software to manage data your way.
Silvia Valcheva is a digital marketer with over a decade of experience creating content for the tech industry. She has a strong passion for writing about emerging software and technologies such as big data, AI Artificial Intelligence , IoT Internet of Things , process automation, etc. Currently you have JavaScript disabled.
In order to post comments, please make sure JavaScript and Cookies are enabled, and reload the page. Click here for instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your browser. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Database Oasis Database Oasis is a popular solution that allows you to create and custom databases in minutes.
It'll do the same with views, giving you simple ways to sort through and visualize your data based on the work you already put into your database. If you want to add more features to your internal tool, Knack includes Workflows that'll automatically run whenever data is added. You can use them to sort data, verify it, send notifications about new entries, and more.
Then, if you're using your app to collect data for your website, you can embed your Knack views into your site to share your work with the world. For a deeper look at features and pricing, see our Knack review. The first thing you'll think about with a new app is the data it needs to collect—something you'd likely gather in a form.
Zengine starts right at the basic, having you build forms for your app that it then turns into a database. It's as simple to use as a form builder app, with a drag-and-drop interface to add text, number, date and other fields to your forms, each with advanced options if you want to, say, limit a text field or validate data. You'll never haver to worry about how the database itself works, as Zengine will create it for you automatically based on your form fields.
Then, each form entry will include tasks and events, which you can then view together from all of your apps on the Zengine dashboard for a simple way to make sure you never forget anything urgent, no matter how many apps you add to your account. For a deeper look at features and pricing, see our Zengine review. Want a way to keep all of your team's work together, and also make your own apps?
Podio might be the best option for you. It's a business social network, with a live activity stream of what everyone's working on, individual and team chat, and workspaces to keep everything organized. And, it also includes hundreds of pre-made apps to manage everything—project, accounting, marketing, news, files, and so much more—along with a simple app builder to make anything you want.
You can install a tool from the Podio App Market and tweak it for your needs, or make your own internal tool by dragging in simple form fields. Then, your team can add data from the form, organize it in tables, boards, lists and more, have data automatically added to apps via RSS, email, Podio Extensions or from other apps via Zapier. It's incredibly simple to start using, and will make nice looking simple internal tools—though perhaps without as advanced of features as you could script together with more database-centric tools.
For a deeper look at features and pricing, see our Podio review. For custom apps that work even when you're offline, Transpose is an app builder that pulls in features from mobile data collection apps. You'll build apps in your browser with form fields, linking fields to create a relational database and pulling in documents, images, and locations for a full-featured experience.
Then, you can visualize your items in table, calendar, card, or kanban views, or download individual records in PDF format. Then, when you're on the go, you can use your Transpose app from your mobile device, adding new data and viewing entries even when you're offline. And to keep your team working together, you can assign database entries to anyone on your team so nothing gets forgotten. For a deeper look at features and pricing, see our Transpose review.
Databases don't have to be so complicated. Airtable is a new online database tool that feels much like using any standard spreadsheet app—albeit a spreadsheet with far more features.
You can just list data in rows and columns, and quickly calculate sums. Then, you can add photos, filter your data, and more. And for even more power, you can reference data from other tables, letting you link entries and build powerful databases without ever getting outside your spreadsheet comfort zone.
Everything's graphical and easy to understand, and you'll never have to worry about how to do anything. Even making a form to let others enter data into your app is simple, as Airtable will automatically generate forms with appropriate fields for each of the columns in your table that you can customize as you want. You can even take your data on the go with Airtable's mobile apps, so you can pull up records or gather data when you're away from the office.
You're reading through this list of database builders so you can build your own tools without coding—but Zoho Creator might convince you that a little coding isn't so bad. It's a form-and-database-focused app builder just like the others, but it also includes simple workflows that'll help beginners write code.
Start off by adding form elements to your Zoho Creator app, and it'll make the appropriate database tables from those fields. Then, you can add custom actions to each field to verify data, show or hide fields based on what's entered, and display data from your database.
Each of these actions can be hand-coded, or you can click buttons to add the code directly and then tweak it yourself. Then, when you're done with your database, you can code your own pages to display the data in the same way. Zoho Creator can still be a simple app for building internal tools—you could just make forms and use its pre-made views to quickly put together your own tool—but it can also let you make much more advanced tools if you want to dig a little deeper.
For a deeper look at features and pricing, see our Zoho Creator review. From the same team as QuickBooks, Intuit's QuickBase is another great way to build internal tools, either with a template from the QuickBase Exchange , a spreadsheet your team's already been using, or by hand-designing your database. You'll define every database field, then QuickBase will automatically make forms for adding new entries, and you can use QuickBase's quickly customizable dashboards and reports to analyze your data.
Then, if you're working in a team, QuickBase's best feature is its detailed permissions and workflows. You can set exactly what everyone on your team is allowed to see, add, and change, and then get QuickBase to do the heavy lifting with workflows that can automatically move and update data, and more.
There's also extensions to add data from Google Maps, integrate document signatures and file uploads, and more. For a deeper look at features and pricing, see our QuickBase review. This chapter started off by telling you why a form isn't enough—and it really might not be on its own.
But a form can be the first part of a series of apps that, together, can help you do a lot more. You'll want to make your form first, adding fields for everything you need to collect, and possibly making more forms for other things you want to save. Then, you'll need to save your data to another app where it's easy to access—you could copy it to a Google Docs spreadsheet , or to Smartsheet where you can also update entries. You could even use Zapier to connect a form to a MySQL database, sending each new entry into the database.
Alternately, if you use Google Sheets to make your form, your data will already be in a spreadsheet—and if you use iFormBuilder , you can push updated info back to your form's own database. Then, you'll need a way to view and sort through your data—that's where the spreadsheet comes in. You can make new pages in your spreadsheet that let you visualize your data in charts and graphs, sort it with Pivot Tables, and use the simple filter and search tools to organize your data.
And if you want to do anything else with your apps—send email notifications, publish blog posts, etc. By the time you're done, you'll have built your own app with a form , and won't need to worry about setting up a "real" database. What really matters is that you're getting your work done in a tool that works for you and your team.
Jump back to Chapter 2 for a roundup of the best online form builder apps to find a great app to make forms, then check Chapter 5's form automation guide for ways to make your form work more like a custom-built app. Yes, it's a blog engine. Yes, it's not your typical app builder. It's not even your typical form builder. But WordPress is built on a MySQL database, and if you're running it on your own servers, you can turn a WordPress installation into a feature-filled app that might not even include a blog.
To switch back to Datasheet view, double-click the table in the Navigation Pane. You might have data that is stored in another program, and you want to import that data into a new table or append it to an existing table in Access. Or you might work with people who keep their data in other programs, and you want to work with it in Access by linking to it.
Either way, Access makes it easy to work with data from other sources. You can import data from an Excel worksheet, from a table in another Access database, from a SharePoint list, or from a variety of other sources. The process you use differs slightly, depending on your source, but the following procedure will get you started.
For example, if you are importing data from an Excel worksheet, click Excel. If you don't see the program type that you need, click More. In the Get External Data dialog box, click Browse to find the source data file, or type the full path of the source data file in the File name box.
Click the option that you want all programs let you import, and some let you append or link under Specify how and where you want to store the data in the current database.
You can create a new table that uses the imported data or with some programs you can append the data to an existing table or create a linked table that maintains a link to the data in the source program. If a wizard starts, follow the instructions on the next few pages of the wizard.
On the last page of the wizard, click Finish. If you import objects or link tables from an Access database, either the Import Objects or Link Tables dialog box appears.
Choose the items that you want and then click OK. Access prompts you about whether you want to save the details of the import operation that you just completed. If you think that you will be performing this same import operation again in the future, click Save import steps , and then enter the details. If you don't want to save the details of the operation, click Close. If you chose to import a table, Access imports the data into a new table and then displays the table under the Tables group in the Navigation Pane.
If you chose to append data to an existing table, the data is added to that table. If you chose to link to data, Access creates a linked table under the Tables group in the Navigation Pane. You can use an application part to add functionality to an existing database.
An application part can be as simple as a single table, or it can comprise several related objects, such as a table and a bound form. For example, the Comments application part consists of a table with an AutoNumber ID field, a date field, and a memo field. You can add it to any database and use it as-is, or with minimal customizing. In the Templates group, click Application Parts. A list of available parts opens. Double-click the database to open it in the default mode specified in the Access Options dialog box or the mode that was set by an administrative policy.
Click Open to open the database for shared access in a multiuser environment so that you and other users can read and write to the database. Click the arrow next to the Open button and then click Open Read-Only to open the database for read-only access so that you can view but not edit it. Other users can still read and write to the database. Click the arrow next to the Open button and then click Open Exclusive to open the database by using exclusive access.
When you have a database open with exclusive access, anyone else who tries to open the database receives a "file already in use" message. Click the arrow next to the Open button and then click Open Exclusive Read-Only to open the database for read-only access. Other users can still open the database, but they are limited to read-only mode. Access automatically creates a new Access database in the same folder as the data file, and adds links to each table in the external database.
To open one of the most recently opened databases, on the File tab, click Recent , and then click the file name for that database.
Access opens the database by using the same option settings that it had the last time that you opened it. If the list of recently used files is not displayed, on the File tab, click Options. In the Access Options dialog box, click Client Settings. Under Display , enter the number of documents to display in the Recent Documents list, up to a maximum of You can also show recent databases in the navigation bar of Backstage view, for two-click access: 1 the File tab, 2 the recent database that you want to open.
Near the bottom of the Recent tab, select the Quickly access this number of Recent Databases check box, and then adjust the number of databases to show.
If you are opening a database by clicking the Open command on the File tab, you can view a list of shortcuts to databases that you have previously opened by clicking My Recent Documents in the Open dialog box. Get started. Need more help? Expand your skills. Get new features first.
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