Hello All,

I am working on a new project that will be written using ASP.NET. The program will be located on my company's intranet where the user will key in a part number and then click a button to view a PDF document in Adobe Reader. The file name and LAN location of the PDF file associated with the part number is held in a SQL Server database table. A separate table will contain a list of network user ID's for which program access will be granted.

The program will perform the following tasks:

1) Get the user's networkID and then query the database to determine if access will be granted.

2) Once a part number has been entered user clicks a "Get Drawing" button, and the program then gathers PDF file records that match the part number. If there are mulitple sheets (each in separate PDF) to the part number, then the program will list the available sheet and prompt the user to make a sheet selection before trigger the opening of the corresponding PDF file.

3) Once a specific file has been determined, the program will open the PDF in Internet Explorer using Adobe Reader.


Since this is quite new to me I was wondering if anyone could offer some input on how to acheive these tasks. The things that I'm researching are:

1) How do I retrieve the user's network ID rather than the intranet server ID?

2) What is the best method for gathering the data from SQL server? I find MANY examples of data binding and data displaying, but very little info on simply querying and evaluating table fields without displaying and manipulating on the screen by the user.

3) How should the data accessing code portion be configured to prevent the user from see the database connection information?

4) What command will execute the opening of the PDF file once the LAN path and file name are retrieved from the database?


That's it. I think the concept is simple, but the task is a bit daunting for a newbie. Any suggestions, code snippets, links to references would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,
John