Contact management system

[darling]

Hello

I’m being charged with the task of writing a VB 6 front end to a SQL database. The database is a simple contact management one. I have company records in one table and I have contact records in another related on a companyID field.

I have been on my ADO and VB courses and I’m a little disappointed with the data grids that come with VB. I’m after a simple looking screen which lists companies and related contacts. (Rather like ACT 2000.) Button and/or menu options would be to add, delete, etc companies and also on the same screen to add, delete, etc contacts. I don’t really want lots of forms.

Has anyone written any similar systems using treeview controls and listboxes or some other nice looking front end data tools? My boss is a perfectionist and if I try to hand in the controls used by the data form wizard (text boxes and a data grid) he’ll kick me all over! I have played about with displaying data in a treeview but I'm not familiar with all the coding and there is no VB help for these on my PC so data manipulation is proving tricky.

Thanks for any help
Nora

 

[AndyDuke]

Nora,

Depends on your budget at the end of teh day. I use grids by DataDynamics, menus by Sheridan (as was - not sure what they are called now) and a range of home produced controls for IO.

If you don't hae money to spend, then you will be limited to freeware or shareware tools (see

http://www.downloads.com).

http://www.downloads.com

is also a good starting point for reviews of controls.

AndyD.

 

[MichaelRed]

I would have the traditional 'frank discussion' w/ the boss. Primarily, you (and 'the boss') need to realize that using third party (compiled) controls WILL become an issue when upgrading the app. Most of them will not work in the next generation of compiler, so will need to be either re-acquired or replaced. Plain vanillia may not be the slickest or prettiest -but it will get your app on-line more quickly and less expensively and be more easily upgraded. Perhaps as importantly, it provides you with the opportunity to use your newly acquired skills without also needing to learn some non-standard control interfaces.

Once the app is running and the major bugs are resolved, you can review the interface and expand your own capabilities by improving the interface (either with carefully selected third party controls or with acquired ones).

I generally adopt the positions that all programming is a itterative process, so the initial release is just one of the steps in the development - and (hopefully) NOT the last.

MichaelRed
m.red@att.net

There is never time to do it right but there is always time to do it over