Chapter 8 -- Updating Your Database

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Chapter 8

Life would be simple if the data accessed by your application was strictly read-only. However, designing and implementing your application becomes more complex once you add the ability to update your database. Fortunately, incorporating the ability to add, delete, and modify data in your database is relatively simple compared to handling scenarios in which multiple users attempt to modify the same data at the same time.

How do you want your application to behave if multiple users try to modify a single record in your database? Should the first user to submit changes succeed and the second user receive an error message? What to do, what to do?

Before we dive into those questions, let's examine the four techniques you can use with ADO to modify data in your database: action queries, stored procedures, updatable server-side Recordsets, and updatable client-side Recordsets. We'll talk about the pros and cons of each of these methods. Each technique has trade-offs based on execution time, development time, flexibility, and control. It's up to you to decide which way is right for you. First we'll cover the two "do-it-yourself" methods—action queries and stored procedures—before moving on to the more RAD (rapid application development) methods of using server-side or client-side updatable Recordsets.