Prototype program involving databases (bugs I need to squash) - Developers

Hi there guys, As some of you might know (as I have posted about this a couple times in the past) I'm developing a prototype for an SMS automated notification system (so far it's been a couple months in development). Because it's a prototype, the program doesn't have to actually do anything under the hood... I can fake shit if I need to. For example: [img]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12453703/TASText_Connection_02-10.png[/img] By clicking "Connect to TxTStream", if you look in the "Messages" box at the bottom, the program is simulating sending SMS messages to peoples cellphones. It's not actually sending anything... For my assignment simply giving the impression that it's sending shit is enough. Thanks to some feedback in the "What do you need help with?" thread I managed to tidy up the UI of the program a bit and clean things up, but some shit's still frustrating me. For example it's really buggy adding entries into the database with my program: [img]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12453703/negativeid.png[/img] If I add a new entry it shows up as -1, instead of incrementing by 1 (i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc.). Also, if I go into the "Messages" tab and add a new database entry I sometimes get the error: [code]An unhandled exception of type 'System.Data.NoNullAllowedException' occurred in System.Data.dll Additional information: Column 'Date' does not allow nulls.[/code] "Date" has a default value (Saturday 24th September) but unless I change the date manually using the dropdown calendar, the program sees this default date as null. I've tried to Google as much as I can to try and help myself solve the problem but I haven't really gone far, unfortunately. My deadline for this assignment is in about 2 weeks and I'm hoping to get the program in a really stable and functional state as possible. If anyone wants to have a play around with my source, I've uploaded it here: [url]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12453703/txtproto.zip[/url] When you debug the program in VS, you'll see a login form come up on the screen. Username is [b]bob[/b] and password is [b]123[/b] (Sorry if my source code is messy or bad practice) While I'm mainly focused on squashing bugs in the program, UI critique is still appreciated. Thanks in advance. <3

Don't use a ID parameter. And if you use SQL, have ID the PRIMARY_KEY, or set it to auto increment.. create table asd(id NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT)

This is pretty much a kick in the nuts but I forgot to say I've no experience in SQL apart from the little I've done with this program, so I'm not quite sure how to use that SQL statement you mentioned. At the moment both the ID value in "Contacts" and "Notices" are primary keys, with Identity = true, Identity Increment = 1, and Identity Seed = 1.

Why do you allow the user to edit the ID then?

That wasn't the intention, I just didn't like how the IDs were incrementing by -1 when really they should be been incrementing by +1. I managed to fix this problem this morning with the Dataset designer... Apart from that is there anything I improve on from a UI perspective? * Edit: Well yeah you can edit the ID but really it's not meant to be editted... it's just meant to increment automatically by +1 each time an entry is added.

The contacts list-- don't use a table for that, atleast, it just looks bad like that. Add a list-like table or if you can, remove a lot of the unneccisary stuff in the table like the left sidebar. Making it possible to "pop" the contacts list out will help too, as it will allow the user to resize the window and get a better view on the contacts without making the window get distorted. It will also allow the person to copy into sending a new sms message without going back and forth to the contacts list. Space out the column titles too, I know you just give it the sql data stuff, but try something. It bugs me. Remove the space between the [code]10 of 10[/code]. Just set it to one label. What does it even do? What are the arrows for? Add a F1 menu.

Cool, thanks. That was an old pic - the sidebar is much simpler. I may just remove the white boxes for ID, Name, Cell Number, etc. and just have the table be modifiable... it'll be much simpler. I'll give myself a day either this week or next week to try and see what I can do with improving the UI, then I'll post the latest screenshot on it.

Please do :D

So far I've tried to attempt of the changes you suggested... This is the simplified UI (I like it way more): [img]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12453703/TASText_Msgs_17-10.png[/img] When you mentioned the left sidebar before I'm assuming you mean that column before the NoticeID column that has no text? If so, I'm not sure how to remove it... although it could be useful to have, because clicking one of those cells selects the whole row it's on. List-like database... not sure how to pull that off just yet. I tried to make it so you could view the database in a seperate window, like this: [img]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12453703/pop.PNG[/img] However the two databases don't seem to update in relation to each other... If I modify shit in Form3, it doesn't update the database in the main program. Perhaps I overlooked something... I'm not sure. I'll let you know if I come across anything else.