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Introduction

Anyone who has ever worked with a computer has had to enter data into it somehow. Anyone who has done any Windows programming (or DOS programming, if you go back far enough) has had to write data entry screens. What is data entry without some kind of validation?

Then again, what is validation? Validation is the process of the receiving data (via the keyboard, the mouse, voice, serial connections, and so on) and making sure that the data meets the specifications you have laid out. For instance, if you are looking for a number but receive a character, your validation code would ignore that character.

I wrote this book because it encompasses pretty much what most Windows programmers do on a day-to-day basis. As programmers, we all work with data. We collect it, massage it, store it, retrieve it, and present results back to the user. As a matter of fact, data entry and validation are likely such constant themes throughout your programming day that I bet you don't even realize you're doing them.

When most new programmers think of data entry, they think "Booooring!" What often comes to mind are endless screens of text-based data entry fields for insurance companies. Where is the fun in that? After all, there is no chance for any creativity and after a few weeks of this kind of work, life becomes dull. It seems like assembly-line programming at its worst.

Data Entry Code Can Be Interesting

Is data entry and validation really this simple and dull? I think not. If it were, I would have changed professions long ago.

Data entry involves two aspects. One is to collect data and the other is to make sure the data makes sense. The fun part is how you go about programming it.

If you think that writing screen after screen of data entry fields is boring, how do you think end users feel using these screens? I would say they feel even more bored. Your job as a programmer here is twofold. First, you need to make the data entry screens not so boring to use, and second, you need to make the screens not so boring to program. An additional task is to make the screens sensible. The only thing worse to a user than an uninteresting program is a frustrating one. How many times have you used a program and had to hunt down certain data fields in screens where they don't belong? You tend to wonder, what were they thinking?! Perhaps you have received some feedback like this about your own program.


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