In this article we will learn how we can build a simple desktop application to perform various operations on the data of the database, like insert, update, delete,display etc.

To understand this, I am creating a simple application, where I will have a form to enter the countries into the database, and the records of that database will be displayed in a datagridview, and these records can also be edited and deleted.

Below is the database table “COUNTRY_TBL”

ID	NAME	STATUS
1	India	1
2	USA	1
3	England	1
4	Germany	1
5	France	1
6	Italy	1

The code for desktop applications are almost similar to the code for websites/web applications with a just a few differences, like desktop applications contain forms instead of pages, and hence events like Form_Load instead of Page_Load, there is no concept of Page postback in desktop applications, so you will not see Page.IsPostBack in the Form_Load even of a desktop application. The Gridview control in a desktop application is known as DataGridView.

Below is the screenshot of how our application will look like:

1. First we will drag a textbox control on our form and we will name it “txtname”, we will put a label before this textbox and set it’s text property to “Name”.
2. Then we will put a GroupBox control and set its Text property to “Status”.
3. We will drag 2 radiobuttons inside this groupbox. For one radio button, we will set the name property to “rbtntrue” and text property to “True” and for the other radiobutton, we will set the name property to “rbtnfalse” and text property to “False”. We will set the checked property for one of the radiobutton, let’s say rbtntrue to “True”.
4. Then we will drag two Button controls on the form and set their properties as shown below:
(1) Button1 => Text = “Add” and Name = “btnaddupdate”
(2) Button2 => Text = “Cancel” and Name = “btncancel”
5. Then we will drag a DataGridView control on the form and we will set it’s Name property to “grdcountry”.
6. Click on the small arrow on the top right of the DataGridView and click on Edit Columns, as shown below:

7. You will see another screen where you can add columns in the DataGridview, add 2 columns, one with HeaderText and Text as “Edit” and other with HeaderText and Text as “Delete”. And then click OK.
8. Now we will write code to do the following tasks:
(1) Bind DataGridview through GrdBind() function.
(2) Insert Update data on the click on “btnaddupdate” button.
(3) ClearForm() function to clear the form after performing the operations.
(4) grdcountry_CellContentClick event, that will handle Edit and Delete operations of the Gridview, based on whether and Edit column is clicked or Delete column is clicked.
(5) Cancel button Click event, that will call the ClearForm() function to clearn the controls values.

In this article, you have learned how you can create a desktop application to perform various operations on the data of the database like Insert, Update, Delete, Display etc.