>>Hi everyone, I could use some advice on this.
>>We can define a select statement like this

>>Dim SQL As String = "SELECT [tipid], [rtaid], [projectname], [location], [shortdesc], [sponsor] FROM [projects] WHERE (archived = @aFilter) ORDER BY [sponsor], [projectname]"
>>Dim oCommand As New SqlCommand(SQL, oConn)
>>oCommand.Parameters.AddWithValue("aFilter", somevalue)

but what do we do when we need WHERE (@acomplicatedstring) which may not involve the archived field but may or may not involve others? Is it appropriate to build the string by concatenation and not use parameters in this case? I am trying to allow the user to build a query that allows any number of variables.
>>
>>Thanks
>
>Instead of building a query that has the parameter values in it, you could set parameters for all fields you might need. Set the uneeded parameters to null and ignore them in the command..
>
>ie..
>
>where (@param1 is null or field1=@param1) and (@param2 is null or field2=@param2)...

This is not a good way to write a query for performance reasons. Please check Erland's blog I quoted earlier.