Question

I’m trying to teach myself c#, and have found various examples on connecting to a MSSQL database. What I’ve done seems to be the simplest way to do it, but still seems overly complicated.

Is there a better way?

here’s my code:

static void dbcon()
{
    List<int> familyID = new List<int>();
    String connString = "Server=[myServer]\\[myInstance];Database=[dbName];User Id=[userID};Password=[password];";
    using (var sqlconn = new SqlConnection(connString))
    {
        using (var cmd = sqlconn.CreateCommand())
        {
            try
            {
                sqlconn.Open();
                cmd.CommandText = "SELECT id FROM family";
                using (var reader = cmd.ExecuteReader())
                {

                    while (reader.Read())
                    {
                        familyID.Add(Convert.ToInt32(reader["id"].ToString()));
                    }
                }
                foreach (int tempy in familyID)
                {
                    Console.WriteLine("id: " + tempy);
                }
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(ex);
            }                   
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

This is fine for an app that only runs one sql statement, but you wouldn’t want to use all that code every time you wanted new data.

What you want to do is separate the code that creates the connection, from the code that gets and runs the sql, from the code that deals with the results.

This way, the connection code (and possibly the data display code) can be written once and called each time you want to execute different sql, and you only have to concentrate on how to write the code that gets the data you want.

hth