You can define a connection string in your App.config:
<connectionStrings>
<add name="nameOfThisConnectionString" connectionString="Data Source=databaseserver; Initial Catalog=database;User Id=username;Password=password"/>
</connectionStrings>
Then you can use the connection string to execute commands:
string connectionString = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["nameOfThisConnectionString"].ConnectionString;
SqlConnection connection = new SqlConnection(connectionString );
connection.Open();
SqlCommand command = new SqlCommand("Select count(*) from members", connection);
int amount= (int)(command.ExecuteScalar());
labelamount.Text = amount.ToString() + " records";
connection.Close();
Thats about it.
You can also use other query's like:
string connectionString = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["nameOfThisConnectionString"].ConnectionString;
SqlConnection connection = new SqlConnection(connectionString );
connection.Open();
SqlCommand command = new SqlCommand("Select * from Contact order by Name", connection);
SqlDataReader dataReader = command.ExecuteReader();
while (dataReader.Read())
{
ListViewItem item = new ListViewItem(dataReader["ID"].ToString());
item.SubItems.Add(dataReader["Name"].ToString());
item.SubItems.Add(dataReader["Email"].ToString());
listViewContacts.Items.Add(item);
}
dataReader.Close();
connection.Close();
With these 2 commands you should be able to get it work.