Question

Looking for the simplest way to get a single value from a database. This gets confusing when you consider all of the 9,000 ways that exist to do this in a .NET language. SqlCommands, DataReaders, Recordsets… oh my!

Assume I already have a connection to the DB opened. I simply want to do something like this:

Dim age As Integer = <SQL statement here>

Answer 1

SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection("connection string goes here");
SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand("SELECT foo FROM ...", conn);

conn.Open();
int age = (int)cmd.ExecuteScalar();
conn.Close();

Not a VB.Net guy, but I think it would look something like this in VB.Net:

Dim conn As SqlConnection = new SqlConnection("connection string goes here")
Dim cmd As SqlCommand = new SqlCommand("SELECT foo FROM ...", conn);

conn.Open()
Dim age As Integer = Convert.ToInt32(cmd.ExecuteScalar())
conn.Close()