It looks like I have two options, connecting through ADO.NET to the text file or streams. I have a couple of follow-up questions/problems.

1. If I want to use ADO.NET to connect to a textfile, I would have to create a schema.ini file. That would be a lot of work. This file has roughly 100 columns in it that vary in size from line to line, and you need to tell ADO.NET exactly what the file looks like. Probably not possible.

2. If I add a DSN to my machine, I would have to add it to any other machine that this may run on. (Not a big deal, just wanted to verify).

3. The other option, streams, is something I don't think I still fully understand. I've read through the tutorial and I'm still confused. I believe I can setup the streamreader for what I need, but how do I use it. Do I use it to continously read in the whole file into a variable? How does it work?

Thanks for the help! I'm getting closer.

shootsnlad