Understanding data connections

In the fabulous forms that we've created up to this point, anytime we've wanted…to provide a user with choices, we've done that by creating a dropdown or a…combo box that actually had a manual list entered into it.…So, for example, if we wanted to allow the user to choose a department name or…choose a category, we typed a list.…Let's go take a look at that control for just a moment and make sure that we…remember how we created those.…

So again, here in the properties of this combo box, we typed each of these entries in.…In the Department list at the top of the form, again this is a place where we did…more typing. And for short lists that don't change much, that's fine.…But what if we have a longer list, or a list that's outside of our control that…someone else maintains?…In that case, it's very tempting for us to try to get information from an…external data source.…Let's take a look at how we would do that.…

In this Data Connections form, I'm ready to create data connections to a lot of…different places that you'll see in the next few movies, but when I want to set…