Who This Book Is For

We assume that you are already familiar with Visual Basic.NET (VB.NET). Although we give step-by-step coding instructions and code examples, we do not cover VB.NET syntax in this book. We assume that you are reasonably comfortable with VB.NET and Visual Studio.NET (VS.NET) and do not waste your time reviewing fundamental concepts. For example, we do not normally step through basic tasks, such as opening and saving project files, except maybe the first time you encounter them. We do, however, often show how to do the same thing in several different ways we hope that this will extend your knowledge of VB.NET, without rehashing the basics. You may also notice variant coding styles, and even screen shots on different versions of Windows all illustrating the flexibility of VB.NET.

Most of the examples in this book are presented with Windows Application (Windows Forms) as the project type. The reason is that nearly all Visual Basic programmers are most familiar and comfortable with this type of application. This approach allows us to focus on database access, rather than on the issues involved in the different types of .NET projects. Still, in later chapters, we do discuss and show ASP.NET Web Applications and Web Services, providing database access examples for these technologies and project types.