Right I apologize if this has been asked before, but I need to find an answer as I start my major college project in a few weeks.

Right, I am planning on making a program that will let the user search through a database then download files that are related to their search. I need to be able to do two things.

1) Acces a file and download it. Whilst it downloads I need it to report the progress to the progress bar.
2) Depending on where I keep the database (online or locally) I will need the program to automaticaly download new database updates. This one is optional because like I said it depends on if I put the database online or bundle it with the program.

I appreciate any help or links to tutorials

Many thanks in advance, Jake.