I took your advice, and made a special session variable called "dsTest" to use at the end of my search button click method, and then I used dsTest in the else statement of the page load method.

The result is this:

Value cannot be null. Parameter name: dataSet
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null. Parameter name: dataSet

Source Error:


Line 159: Adapter.SelectCommand = New OleDbCommand(SelectStatement, Connect)
Line 160: Adapter.SelectCommand.Connection.Open()
Line 161: Adapter.Fill(dsSoftware, "[SOFTWARE DATABASE]")
Line 162: softwareGrid.DataSource = dsSoftware.Tables("[SOFTWARE DATABASE]")
Line 163: Session("dsTest") = dsSoftware


Its claiming the data set is null...very interesting. Well, its past 5, and my brain is shot. Will do more work tomorrow. Just wanted to keep you all posted in case you were curious.

Have you step through it with the debugger?

IListsource (original error) is still bothering me... I would read up on that, as you seem to implementing it at somepoint.

Here is what microsoft states about it (used for Datatable and DataSet, not a datagrid)

I also notice something else curious in your code:

In your edit command you delete a row in a table? Why would you ever delete a row you are editing?

Also, there is no "equals" in your WHERE clause creation? And nothing your are comparing? WHERE columnA = ? Is not in your WHERE clause creation?

Help with Code Tags

ASP.NET Syntax (Toggle Plain Text)

...
Dim WhereClause As String 
 
WhereClause = "Where " 
If txtSoftwareNum.Text <> "" Then 
	WhereClause = WhereClause & "InStr([Software #],'" & txtSoftwareNum.Text & "')>0 AND "  
End If 
..
...
....
SelectStatement = "Select * From [SOFTWARE DATABASE] " & WhereClause

... Dim WhereClause As String WhereClause = "Where " If txtSoftwareNum.Text <> "" Then WhereClause = WhereClause & "InStr([Software #],'" & txtSoftwareNum.Text & "')>0 AND " End If .. ... .... SelectStatement = "Select * From [SOFTWARE DATABASE] " & WhereClause

It should be more like WhereClause = "WHERE = ". And the statement : "InStr([Software #],'" & txtSoftwareNum.Text & "')>0 AND " will result in a number/integer being returned from the InStr function, 0, or greater than zero. So if it returns an integer, then you would have this in the where clause : # > 0 Which would be a true or false result from that comparison. So how would it return anything in a SELECT * FROM software WHERE ?? = true would make no sense. Unless the ?? is a column that contains either True or False as a value.

Make sense? There is no Comparison Column, no equal sign, and the comparison value would not make sense? So my guess is this: "Select * From [SOFTWARE DATABASE] " & WhereClause is returning an EMPTY or NULL dataset, because nothing is retrieved that matches your WHERE Clause. Thus, it is this reason as to why you are getting this error message.

Again...go through and debug it line by line...I will bet you will see the values being retrieved are not what you think.

Hope this helps

p.s. I had to write this three times, since the storm killed the power while writing it, and browser crashed in the middle of the second time, so I apologize if I seem scattered in this reply.

OK, well first of all, I would proudly like to announce that this problem has been officially solved- due to some changes in page load and some clever use of session variables. I now have a program that sucessfully searches and updates the database. All I have to do now is finish the insert functionallity for new records and I'm done. If anyone would like to see the finished code, just let me know and I'll post it.

And Paladine, whoa dude- about that select query not being valid after the where- look again. The if structure I created changes the query dynamically based on which categories the user chooses to search by. Each if may add on some code to the query followed by an AND. The last if statement uses LEN to cut off the final AND. For instance, if you search by Software Number, the "WhereClause" as I named it looks something like this:

"Where InStr([Software #],'1A 0001')>0 "

Anyhoo, I thought it was fairly clever if I do say so myself. So yah, thanks for your help everyone. Im not done yet, I need to get back to work- but feel free to request a posting of whichever "fixed up" methods u might like to see and I will post them. Good luck all. :cheesy: :cheesy: :cheesy:

Glad to hear it.

But it is a new one on me that you have an SQL WHERE clause without an "equals" sign. Your method is a pretty niffty way of doing it, I applaud you on that.

Yeah, I admit my method is a bit unusual. Here's my rationale: If a user enters a partial value into one of the text boxes, the InStr method will pick up on that and return all values containing that string portion. As for the lack of the equals symbol, the greater than symbol works just as well in this particular situation. Its all seems to be legal! Different strokes for different folks I guess.

Thanks for the details. Sorry I wasn't much help.

Glad you got things working!