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Getting to Know libDatabaseHelper

Introduction

When developing a small scale applications, have you ever needed to access databases, but just did not want to, just because you remember how difficult, tedious and time-consuming it can be. Well not you don't have to. This library was designed and written with the intent of making, the manipulation of databases, tables and records, much easier. No one should have to write the same or similar code over an over again, even for different entity/table types within a database. So we have isolated and put that tedious task of having to deal with databases, tables and fields into a library;. All you have to do is write a class that is extended by DatabaseEntity and another couple of lines, and voila you have a table to store and retrieve data.

Getting data from the database could not be much easier. You do not have to deal with DataReaders anymore. Ask from the DatabaseManager or UniversalDataModel for an entity with filters of your choosing, and you shall receive (everything in the form of objects - DatabaseEntities). You could do the same with filling into a DataGridView, DataTable or even a Form/Control.

Speaking of Windows Forms, now with libDatbaseHelper, you do not have to go around creating windows forms from scratch (even though you could), for editing DatabaseEntities. That is what DatabaseEntityFormGenerator executable is for. Let DatabaseEntityFormGenerator generate all the forms you need for all the DatabaseEntity types you have.

Like said before, the general idea is to make, dealing with databases much easier and friendlier. So with this library you can get a running, database driven application in minutes.

However there some limitations, and might even be more. So please go through the list I have identified and decide whether this is the best approach for your application.

• For the moment the only database supported is SQL CE. A MySQL compatible version is on the way and will be introduced in the next couple of weeks.
• As of the current implementation, all of the tables should have a primary key.
• The library depends heavy on .NET's reflection, so this is not going to be the most performance driven application.
• To provide maximum compatibility, the library is built on .NET 3.5.
• The current version or most likely all of the future versions will not support Mono, since the package System.Data.SqlServerCe, a vital part of the library, is unavailable under Mono.