The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Seeing the Basics:  Adding grid capability to your VB applications Tony Stevenson

1. To access the Data Form Wizard, click on the "Add-Ins" option of the VB main design menu, and then select the "Add-In Manager ..." option.
   
   The Add-In Manager dialog now appears, and from its list of available Add-Ins on your system, select the "VB Data Form Wizard" check box, and click the "OK" button.
   
2. Now click the "Add-Ins" option of the VB main design menu once again, and you'll see the last entry is now the "Data Form Wizard ..." option. Click this now.
   
   The "Data Form Wizard--Introduction" dialog now appears. Since this is only an introductory form, click "Next" to move on to the next screen. (If you don't want to see this form again, click the check box labelled "Skip this screen in the future" before clicking "Next".)
   
3. The dialog which now appears is the "Data Form Wizard--Database Type". Here you select the preferred database format for the sample application we are creating. Leave it pointing to the default option, "Access", which is Microsoft's own relational database management system. Click "Next" to continue.
   
4. When the "Data Form Wizard--Database" dialog displays, click the "Browse ..." button to find the directory containing the "Biblio.mdb" database (this comes supplied with VB and we'll use it as our preferred database in our sample application). Click "Next" to continue.
   
5. From the "Data Form Wizard--Form" dialog, select the "Grid (Datasheet)" option to nominate it as our desired form layout. Click "Next".
   
6. The next dialog to appear is the "Data Form Wizard--Record Source". Click the down arrow of the "Record Source" combo box to reveal the different tables available in the "Biblio.mdb" database. For our application, choose the "Authors" table. Then select the button with the ">" caption. This will instruct VB to make all the fields in the "Authors" table available to our sample application. Click "Next" to continue.
   
7. The next dialog, "Data Form Wizard--Control Selection" allows you to nominate what controls are to appear on the form being generated. For this exercise, check the options "Add", "Update", and "Close". Then click "Next".
   
8. The last dialog is "Data Form Wizard--Finalised!" where VB suggests a name of "frmAuthors" for the form it will automatically generate. Leave it set on this default name and click the "Finish" button.
   
   VB will now go to work and create the sample project. This will consist of two forms--a main form and the second one, "frmAuthors", which contains the DBGrid. Now there is only one task left before running the application.
   
9. On the main form (named Form1), add a command button, and in its Click event, add the following one line of code:
   frmAuthors.Show.
   
10. Now run the application, and when the main form appears, click its command button. Viola! There is a form containing a fully-functional grid control, and best of all, it required only a single line of code to make it operational.
    

• Visual Basic fundamentals
  
• VB controls, with an emphasis on VB 5.0's new controls, as well as a discussion of control arrays and containers
  
• The steps involved in out-putting and displaying information
  
• A discussion of VB from a professional developer's perspective, including the topics of classes, user interface design (one whole chapter is devoted to creating applications using a Multiple Document Interface), and online help
  
• ActiveX controls and documents
  
• Database programming
  
• Web programming
  
• Distributed Client/Server environment programming.

Reprinted from the June 1998 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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