Collections vs. Databases (what to use)

[Ebilum]

I'm trying to write a program that will track individual jobs with their Materials used and Expenses used too. I want to keep a list of all the materials in inventory and then in the job details form show just those materials used for that one job. I've come to a slump when trying to figure out how to keep the materials seperated. Should I create a database, or somehow use an object collection. Thanks for any ideas.

[Carnifex]

I assume you want to keep a permanent record of the materials and expenses. In this case you will definately want to use a database to store this.

Think of it this way. A database is a persistant store of information. A collection is a temporary store of data in memory.

You may still want to use collections in order to manipulate the database information. Alot of the time I take information from a database, store it in a class, and store the class in a collection.

I hope that rough explaination helps.

[Ebilum]

Yeah, that helped out alot. I was thinking that's how it had to go. So I can populate a list box from a database? I'm kindof new to this if you can't tell. Thanks for the help anyway.

[Pirate]

Originally posted by Ebilum
Yeah, that helped out alot. I was thinking that's how it had to go. So I can populate a list box from a database? I'm kindof new to this if you can't tell. Thanks for the help anyway.

Yes , you can populate almost all controls with data stored in a database .