Visual CE^® FAQ

What is the difference between a table and a form?

Visual CE® makes a distinction between a "table" and "form". A table is a cloud of information. Only a computer can read a table. A form is a program that can read data from a table and put it on the screen, and vice-versa.

On your Windows CE device, tables are stored in either:

• RAM memory in the \Databases folder. Their icons look like little stacks of paper.
• A Pocket Access database.
• A SQL Server CE database.

Only computers can read tables.

Forms can be stored anywhere on your Windows CE device. They can be in RAM memory or on a Flash Memory card. Their icons look like little forms. Their file extension is always .VCE (to show file extensions, select VIEW | OPTIONS and clear the "Hide file extensions" checkbox). Every form is associated with one table.

Data is never stored in the form, data is only stored in a table. The form contains instructions on how the data in a table is to appear on the screen. As you enter data into the form, it is entered into the table. When you tell the form to look at the next record, it reads data from the table and displays it.