Chapter 8: Working with Databases

Overview

In this chapter, we start to look at how we can use a database to power our web pages. Web Matrix provides a great environment for working with data in a SQL Server or MSDE database. It's nearly all just "point and click", and you don't really need to know a great deal about how the database works. But, even though they say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, we'll show you a bit of what's going on under the hood as well in this chapter.

We start by looking at the tools built into Web Matrix for working with data, and then see how we connect to our database server, build a new database, and add some data. We'll build one of the tables that are used in the Cornflakes at Midnight website you'll see later in the book.

The tasks for this chapter are:

• Take a look at the Data Explorer in Web Matrix

• Connect to an existing database and show some data

• Create a new database for our Cornflakes at Midnight website

• Add a table to the database, and put some data in it

• Use some database code, known as a Stored Procedure, to extract that data

So, let's get on with it right away by looking at the Data Explorer window in Web Matrix.