Visual Basic Concepts

Interacting with Data in an ASCII Text File

The data your application needs to interact with may not always be stored in a relational database. It may be stored in delimited or fixed-length fields in an ASCII text file. For example, your application's data source may be data downloaded into a text file from a mainframe computer, a file converted from an unsupported database format or operating system, or an "ad hoc" data file created with a text editor.

By creating a data-aware class and using Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), you can use Visual Basic to create applications that interact with data in an ASCII text file. Your application can read data from a text file, update fields, add new records, and write data back to the text file as if the data were stored in a relational database.

Topics

This series of topics shows you how to use a data-aware class and ADO to create a simple database application that interacts with data in a tab-delimited text file. It demonstrates:

• Creating a data-aware class that reads records from a delimited text file

• Creating a form that lets you view and update data from a data-aware class

• Modifying the form to let you add new records

• Modifying the class and form to write records back to the delimited text file