Real Software Forums

Hi All -

So I'm finally getting around to modifying a project I've been working on for awhile (I've mentioned it in some other threads).

Essentially, I'm working on a stock market model where I use information from a given day and compute values for a given list of stocks and then simulate trading. I designed the program to run on a 3 dimensional array, DATA(i,j,k) where i was the timestep, j was the stock, and k was a given value for that stock on that day. I had this program running on a small .csv file but, to my dismay, when I expanded the number of days of information and the number of stocks the program was unable to create an array large enough.

Long story short - I've created a database from a .csv file and I'm sort of struggling with how to interact with the database (I'm not familiar with SQL). I was wondering if there was any sort of tutorial on using SQL in RB?

Specifically, if I think of my data in terms of having indices i x j x k (as I did in array(i,j,k)) I wanted to have a listbox that displays the j x k information for a given i and then when the user clicks a pushbutton, i is iterated by 1 and the new j x k data is displayed. I'm just not sure the most efficient way to populate the cells of the listbox from the database. That would probably be a good start.

Thanks all.

It is always difficult to use one language (sql) inside of another language (RB). So it will be very important for you to learn sql apart from RB - or at least the portions of sql you're going to be using. Download a query browser tool and start interacting with your database in the "native" environment. Then bring what you've learned into the RB environment.

There are many good online tutorials for sql. Just don't try to mix in RB until you're familiar with sql. It will save you a ton of frustration.

Ok. Thanks for the tip. I knew SQL was used within several other languages but I didn't realize SQL was stand-alone.

For SQL express and SQL Server i have found the SQL Maestro Tools very good for both the Novice and Pro. Has a very good visual query designer too.

http://www.sqlmaestro.com/

Also you may like to take a look at CubeSQL if SQLite is an option for you.

http://www.sqlabs.com/cubesql.php