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i made this preject on VB so i don't need any asp sites

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You'd be better off using smoke signals or a coffee-can and fishing-line rig as a chat system

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AfterMath,

I've done something along the same lines.

I had a trigger on a table that fires whenever someone UPDATES a record. That Trigger called a VB EXE. The VB EXE got command line parameters from the Trigger, and used winsock to connect to a destination PC over TCP/IP. The Detination PC had a WinSock app "listening" for the TCP/IP data.

I think that's about what you need to do. Instead of a VB EXE, you could use a VB ActiveX DLL (COM object).I can't give you any code etc from that project, because someone would hang me. I think if you know anything abotu VB + winsock and do a bit of reading, you can write this. One word of warning.....the EXE that is called in the trigger, make SURE it terminates. If it gets stuck, so does your database.
Things to look up:
Triggers
xp_cmdshell

Michael

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What should happen is that during startup, check to see who is online.
Then whenever some goes offline/online, send a msg to the people who have that use in their contact list to let that client know of the state change.

Actual chat needs to be point-to-point. It should not go though SQL server for the chatting part.

<rant>
Speaking of square pegs and round holes, what are they teaching people in college these days? I'm 23 years old and I only went to college long enough to figure out those guys don't know ANYTHING about real-world problems and solutions. I almost always seem to come up with better solutions than people that are graduating / graduated from college. Since when is polling a good idea? It should usually be avoided at all costs.

Thousands of dollars and years out of your life to learn stuff that is wrong or useless in the real world. But there are the parties.....
</rant>

Michael

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Aftermath-

What MichaelP and Page47 have stated is basically what I wanted to say, and I apologize for coming off like an asshole before.

The point is, for a chat program, SQL Server should not be part of it. For the sake of storing a buddy list, yes, that's fine. But as MichaelP suggested, you should connect, get the data, and close the SQL Server connection at the time the client first starts the chat program. The most that your stored procedure would have to do is pass the login name of the user (like an ICQ number or Yahoo name) to the SQL Server to look up the data for that user, and return it to the client. It's very basic:

CREATE PROCEDURE GetUserData @userid varchar(50) AS
SELECT * FROM UserDateTable WHERE UserID=@userid

That's it. The reason to use a stored procedure is that it will be faster and more secure than using a dynamic SQL string.

As far as this assignment goes, if your professor or TA or whoever you're doing this for suggested that you use SQL Server for a chat program, go and rip their balls off so they cannot have children and further pollute the human genome. They've got you barking up the wrong tree. Michael is 150% correct on that, there is absolutely zero real world practicality to that approach. You'd be better off using smoke signals or a coffee-can and fishing-line rig as a chat system.

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AfterMath....about the more money thing.....that's not always true in the real world. I make as much if not more than the people with degrees for the simple fact I have TONS more real-world experince than those guys. So instead of having a huge bill to pay after 4 years, I've been making money for four years, and have lots of real-world experience. Your mileage may vary though.

About the triggers thing, do you have access to SQL Server's Books Online? If so look there. if not, I can post some info from BOL on here for ya.

Michael

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AfterMath... What do you mean by "send me something when the table is changed"? What do you want sent? An email message? And MSMQ message? A picture postcard from Hawaii?

As for those of you who think more education will help you earn more, I suggest you run out and buy the July 2002 issue of Business 2.0 magazine and read the cover story titled, "What is an MBA worth?". You won't like the answer.

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