I have been tasked to create a module, which is a new one on me. I've spent most of the day trying to get the planets to align, and I seem to have gotten stuck on one particular issue.

1. I've been loosely following this guide for creating my module, and I'm to the point where I'm trying to get my database set up. I'm to the point where the instructions say to copy-paste the contents of 01.00.00.SqlDataProvider into the SQL window and run it. However, I do this and I simply get a generic "There is an error in your query!" spat back at me. Is there seriously no better help than this? The contents of the file, by the way, are located in this patebin, and I haven't changed it from when it was set up for me. I see the comment telling me to search/replace the tokens, but the tutorial didn't cover this so I was under the impression that those tokens were subs uted for me.
2. Once I get this sample set up, what is involved with adding and removing database columns? From what I've seen, the default entries seem to be a couple of id's, a creation time and user, and a generic "contents" field. I've skipped ahead in the tutorial I linked above and the whole "Just copy and paste this gigantic block of code" doesn't sit well with me; not being used to Visual Basic it's kind of hard for me to make sense of it.
3. Are there seriously no better module creation tutorials than the one I found? Google hasn't been very helpful, only returning seemingly out of date tutorials like that (looks like for DNN4) and 40 page long PDF's that are way out of the scope of what I'm trying to do.
4. I'm using SQL Server Express 2008. If I try to use the site and then connect to the database through visual studio, it tells me it can't because the file is in use. Sometimes. Sometimes it does, but then my site goes down with a generic site down message and no detailed error which only goes away if I restart my windows machine. How can I have two connections to the database at once?

The best resources for module development are:

• Mitchel Sellers' book
• Chris Hammond's recent set of blog posts and Visual Studio Template files
• This webinar from DotNetNuke
• Michael Washington's adefwebserver.com site

Most of the modern material is going to suggest that you build modules using the "WAP" model.  This requires the full version of Visual Studio as it want's to compile the code. 

I don't know if you can use Chris Hammond's templates with VS Express.  I believe that Mitchel Sellers' book covers both approaches, as do Michael Washington's tutorials. 

As for your specific questions, pasting the SQL Code into the window on the SQL page is one way to do it.  I'd probably recommend that you use SQL Server Management Studio Express to execute the various scripts, create the stored procedures, etc.  If you are not going to try to produce installable versions of your module, you might just ignore this all together.

You will need to customize the database fields, etc. depending on your application.  What you've referred to probably is the minimum and follows a "best practices" approach.  Again, the resources that I mentioned will cover this in more detail.

I'm not sure of the problem you are having with SQL Server Express.  Certainly is supports multiple connections.  You might want to spend some time going though it's configuration.  Also, if you are not familiar with SQL Server Management Studio Express, spend some time with it.  It's a great tool for looking into and working with SQL Server databases.

You comments about not being familiar with VS lead me to believe that you are not experienced in developing ASP.NET programs.  You will find that there is, perhaps, a bit of a learning curve.  Do you have other programming experience?  If so, you should be able to figure things out?

Depending on the actual functionality that you need to achieve with your module, you might be a candidate for the (very) new Razor tool from Microsoft that is built into the new version of DotNetNuke (5.6.1) that was released today.  That might ease the task of learning your way around.

Finally, the more specific your questions are regarding the application you are trying to produce, the better we can help you.

You might also want to look at OWS and DotNetMushroom RAD as alternatives for creating modules.  We have tutorials here for both of those.

I've got the book on order at the moment. Thanks. I'm not familiar with WAP vs WSP, so I'll just take you at your word. By "full version" of Visual Studio, I assume you mean that Visual Studio Express 2010 is not suitable for this task for compiling the code? Curiously, I tried to install SQL Management Studio Express, but I didn't see the "feature" available. I downloaded the installer and followed the prompts, only to be told that there were not possible "features" to upgrade my existing SQL Express install with. I remember dealing with SQL Management Studio before and I do remember being impressed...I just can't seem to install it for some odd reason. I have many years worth of PHP development experience, along with a slathering of other languages that I've toyed with (Python, Java, now Node.js), and I did write a few VB6 applications back in the day. So it's not totally unfamiliar. Perhaps it might be that there are simply more layers of indirection in dotnetnuke than I am used to in other frameworks/CMS's that I have used in the past. I did notice the upgrade light when I was working today. I'll take a look at it. I have a widget created by someone else in my company. The widget is an image carousel, with a left and a right button. Originally we were simply going to run the widget off of an AJAX pull that has a list of images,  les and such, however we found the JSON to be too cumbersome and decided that we should create an admin page for managing the widget...so I figured that a module was the next logical step up.

My approach, at least as it goes in my head, was simple. The database would store a row per image, and each row would have four columns, the ID, the image  le, an image URL that the image goes to when clicked, and the image itself. The image itself is the most interesting part, I was taking a look at DNN's file manager and presumed that I could save myself a little trouble by not incorporating the file upload into the module itself, but having the database refer to the image, either by name or by fileID (I haven't looked too closely at the docs for DNN's file manipulation tools). However, when I couldn't install the SQL Manager or get the SQL query window to recognize the default sql that was spat out by the template, I kind of ran into a roadblock... I saw those. I'll probably take a look OWS tomorrow.

Thanks for your help.