"Douglas Buchanan" <dbuchanan52@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:7217f9ea.0410110642.74a5c338@posting.google.com...
> Sahil,
>
> Thank you for the very thorough answer.
>
> "Sahil Malik" <contactmethrumyblog@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:<uHi0pUrrEHA.3464@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl>...
> > Why put things in a structure when they could be perfectly stored in a
> > database? Because simply a database is not available everywhere.
> >
> > Say you were to write a webservice that gives you back an arraylist of
> > employees. The webservice is called by an ASP.NET page, which then
renders
> > to a browser; maybe even a WAP browser on a Pocket PC. Even though you
could
> > possibly have a SQL Server running there; you could not guarantee access
to
> > it, you could not guarantee it's existence, not to mention you cannot
> > guarantee every pocket pc with a pocket dba to maintain that sql server.
> >
> > It's just an alternate representation of the data to make it more
portable.
> > Another word for this is "Business objects", so Employee structure could
be
> > a business object, customer/order/address etc. could be other business
> > objects. And these have the ability to live on their own, and describe
> > themselves completely without relying on any other entity. Many of these
can
> > be serialized and sent from one end of the wire to another; like star
trek
> > transporter even. Or some of these can be shallow serialized like the
movie
> > Matrix (proxy stays on one machine and the stub acts on another machine;
one
> > dies the other croaks too). The main theme being, they can do all this
> > without any setup, or need for any additional software. Certainly not a
> > heavy duty s/w like a RDBMS.
> >
> > Hella exciting stuff man .. welcome to programming :). Further reading -
> > Structure Vs. Class in .NET.
> >
> > - Sahil Malik
> > You can reach me thru my blog
http://www.dotnetjunkies.com/weblog/sahilmalik
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > "Douglas Buchanan" <dbuchanan52@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> > news:7217f9ea.0410091851.55eabc8e@posting.google.com...
> > > Newbie to donnet
> > >
> > > This is an example of a structure given in vs.net help
> > >
> > > ============================
> > > Private Structure Employee
> > > Public GivenName As String ' This employee's given name.
> > > Public FamilyName As String ' This employee's family name.
> > > Public Extension As Long ' This employee's telephone extension.
> > > Private Salary As Decimal ' This employee's annual salary.
> > > Public Sub GiveRaise(Raise As Double) ' Raise this employee's
> > > salary.
> > > Salary *= Raise
> > > End Sub
> > > Public Event ReviewTime() ' This employee must be reviewed.
> > > End Structure
> > > ============================
> > > (I come from database application backgroud.)
> > >
> > > The example given above stores emplyee information. Why bother storing
> > > employee information in a structure if you are going to later put into
> > > a database anyway. Why not just put it directly into a database. Or is
> > > the example above just an impractical example?
> > >
> > > Can someone give me an example for the use of a structures that
> > > illustrates what its advantages are.