straightforward way to programmatically retrieve string from db?

Hello -- I'm using asp.net 2 in visual web developer and I'm drawing a blank finding documentation on on this fairly simple task. Since this is the novice's thread, I felt bold enough to ask.

I'd like to programmatically retrieve a string from the aspnet_usermembership database -- the select statement would be something like the below. Can anyone point me at example code to do this programmatically -- so I end up with the LoweredEmail string from the DB? I guess I could either read it directly from the DB, or from a gridview control on the page -- but I'm new to SQL data manipulation and althoug I've seen examples nothing seems to work in this environment and it's probably simpler than I think to those who know what they;re doing..

Thanks for pointers.

"SELECT LoweredEmail FROM aspnet_Membership WHERE username=@dotnet.itags.org.Username"

Hey, just an idea. You can use SqlCommand.ExecuteScalar() to return a single value from database, assuming that your select SQL statment returns a scalar value. The method returns an object type so you need to comvert, in your case, a string type, like something below

...

dim LoweredEmail as String

dim SqlCmd as New SqlCommand("sql stmt", SqlConnObt)

LoweredEmail = CType(SqlCmd.ExecuteScalar(), String)

...

Thanks Bernie I'll give that a shot -- looks to be exactly what I needed.

Richard.

Worked fine -- just needed to do this in a two-stage process to get the GUID for the user from the username, which teyn gets teh email address. So added

Dim SqlEmailCmdAsNew SqlCommand("SELECT LoweredEmail FROM aspnet_Membership WHERE userid=@.Guid", myMembershipConnection)

SqlEmailCmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("@.Guid", userid)