question

You can adapt one of the basic samples returned by Google, like :
SEARCH IN MS ACCESS RECORDS USING VB.NET
How to search in Ms Access Database records using VB.net | Search records in database
etc...

First let me say that SQLite is installed by all current versions of Windows. It could be useful for this instead of Access. The following uses Access.

Also, you probably should have added a tag for VB.Net to make it more obvious that you want that.

I created a blank Windows Forms project using VB.Net. I double-clicked the form to create a Form1_Load event handler. I added Imports System.Data.OleDb to the top of the source code file. I added a DataGridView to the form. I put the following in the Form1_Load event handler.

 Dim cs As String = "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=G:\Sam\Documents\db1.mdb"
 Dim dt As New DataTable
 Dim ds As New DataSet
 Dim da As New OleDbDataAdapter
 Dim q As String = "Select ShowName from ShowsFall2014"
 da = New OleDbDataAdapter(q, cs)
 ds.Tables.Add(dt)
 da.Fill(dt)
 DataGridView1.DataSource = dt.DefaultView

You need to customize that as appropriate. To get the connection string, go to (view) the Server Explorer and right-click on Data Connections and select "Add Connection...". After creating the connection look at the database properties; a connection string is there, you can simply copy it to the clipboard and paste it into the program.

I am using VS 2017 but I assume the preceding works for VS 2019 too.

Hi SimpleSamples,

I have not heard of SQLite but I will look into it later (if I ever get that far with this project).

I don't know what "adding a tag for VB.Net" means so if this is necessary, then perhaps you could elaborate further.

I add your code to my project and it still flags up the OleDbDataAdapter items as 'not defined'.

To try and simplify things a bit I followed your instructions above and created a new project (which I called Database Test) and I did exactly what you said (apart from the pathname to the database file) but I get exactly the same result, the two OleDbDataAdapter words are underlined in red and the error message says they are undefined.

Perhaps VB.NET 2019 does not allow database access (which seems a bit unlikely) or else I am missing something very obvious (also unlikely) or maybe there is some setting in the project that needs to be set. As you can probably imagine, this is very frustrating, when I started this project I assumed that the database part would be relatively straightforward since Microsoft say that database access is built in to the system but it is anything but so far, for me anyway.

Do you have any other ideas as to what is happening or not happening and what I can do next?

Peter.

[I could not answer in comment...]

Visual Studio is saying that that the Imports line is not necessary and also that the OleDbConnection is not defined. So how do I get it defined?

Are you sure that the System.Data Reference is correctly added ?

I have this line Imports System.Data.OleDb at the very top of the VB window, is this correct?

Peter.

OK, there is no References option on the menu but if I click on the Project item the drop down box shows 3 reference options -
Add Project Reference
Add Shared Project Reference
Add COM Reference

If I click on Add COM Reference I get a new form which shows a million (or thereabouts) references some of which seem to be database related (Microsoft Access 16.0 Object Library, Microsoft DAO 3.6 Object Library, Microsoft Data Access Components Installed.., etc, etc to name but a few), should I be selecting one (or more) of these?

Peter.

Here is a wealth of resources for working with VB.NET with MS-Access and note even though there is a lot of code samples I don't cover every single aspect but there is more than enough to get you beyond started.

• See my GitHub repository for working with VB.NET with MS-Access .accdb. With a three part series on Microsoft TechNet, part 1, part 2, part 3.
  

• Using TableAdapter, see this GitHub repository

Notes

• If open to ideas, consider using SQL-Server even after working with MS-Access as code-wise little difference while major differences/benefits is that SQL-Server offers more features in regards to SQL, easy to back-up. This GitHub repository has code samples for moving from MS-Access to SQL-Server via VB.NET.
  

• For MS-Access to work you need to install the Access database engine. I'm on Windows 10 with the 32bit version of the engine.

  
  

Hi Experts,

I have looked at the various links (which I have bookmarked for future reference) but I am thinking now that trying to use a database to hold a few thousand records is far too complicated for my simple requirements.

Looking through the Web pages that you kindly showed me, I came across the DataTable object which seems to be a lot simpler and basically, as far as I can tell, gives me all the facilities that I would need. I have a single table with 1 Text field (which holds 4, 5 and 6 letter words), 1 Number field (which holds the word length) and 1 Boolean field which just flags up if the word has already been used in the current game. Providing I can find a way to copy the data from the database into this table (and I believe the table is saved to disk once it is populated) then I can use standard RecordSet functions to search and fetch data which I am already familiar with in Access.

If anyone knows of any reason why this would not work then please let me know (and why) but hopefully I can get it working once I have researched it some more (although I am sure I will be back with more questions at some point).

Anyway, thanks for all your help, this has been a bit of learning curve but I have found out a lot more about VB.NET 2019 over the last few days which I am sure will be useful in the future.

Peter Hibbs.