Creating a program

I recently installed Visual Studio 2005 on my pc and am ready to dive into it. I've been asking myself this question for years now: How does a program store data?

I know there are possibilities of using a MS Access database and bind the data to the program. Also, there is Oracle and MSSQL, etc. BUT, after I compile the application and create an installer, what happens from here? Let's say I used an Access database and a user installs the program on their pc. What if they don't have Access installed? Would it still work? I've seen some programs that create their own files, (i.e. application.zab) where .zab is the programs own file extension. Then, you try opening this file using notepad and it is all garble. Most likely encrypted or something. How could I do something like this?

Cheers

JMH

you mean how the installer works? basically it's shrinking
everything as much as possible (note that if you try to
zip the files you'll get nearly 0% compression) and put
it in format recognized by Windows Installer.
I believe you'll find this link interesting:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa370834.aspx

Hmm..let me see if I can describe this better...

Let's say I were to create a program that uses data from a MS Access database. I then compile it, create an installation wizard and ship it off to a user. The user then installs it on their pc and is ready to use it.

My questions are:
If that user doesn't have Access installed on their
computer, will the program still work? Similarily, if I create a
program using SQL server, does the same hold true, or
does the user have to purchase SQL server to run the
program?

Some programs use a text file, giving it their own file
extension, as a database. When opened it looks like garble,
but the program still understands it. Is this a good practice,
and if so, how would I do something like that?

Thanks,

JMH

Depends on how you coded things. Visit http://www.microsoft/com to get some idea of the database connectivity that MS provides. If you just use ADO code in your program then Access itself is generally not needed on the target machine.

Visit msdn.microsoft.com and look around the stuff they have on the different programming environments available.

as Doug said most probably it would work, as it only requires
basic ADO which come as part of Windows.


that's already different story - as far as I know, something
must be installed - not full SQL Server, probably some sort
of "SQL Client".


yes I've done something like that myself once for practice.
you start with ordinary text file that hold the data in the
format you choose (for example tab delimeted, first line is
the field names and each further line is record) then you
"garble" the text using encryption or hashing methods.

You don't need to install anything but MDAC (which is already present in Windows 2000 and up) if you want to write code that connects to a sql server on a different computer. You just use the same ADO objects to connect and manipulate the database server as you would for using Access (or any other dbms for that matter).

Thanks for the info Doug and Yahav! This should help me get started!

JMH

no problem JMH, any time!