Good .asp book & Newbie Question

[jma]

I'm looking for a good book on .asp for beginners...anyone have any rec's?

Meanwhile, I have a question that is very newbie oriented..

1. If I have a database that has some blank fields, mixed with fields that have data...how can I get it to only display the fields that have data in them?

Then sort the results alpha and display on page?

Thanks, M

 

[spoondyke]

A book I would recomend is Beginning Active Server Pages 3.0 by Wrox Press.

As for your question you would do something like the following......

sqlString = "SELECT your_field FROM your_table " &_
"WHERE your_field !='" & "" & "'" &_
"ORDER BY your_field"
set rs = connection.execute(sqlString)

(above may have errors)

this SQL statement is selecting only the records where the data is NOT EQUAL(!=) to ""(ie an empty string).
All you need to do to sort them is ORDER them by your chosen field.

hope this is of some help