Beginning Visual Basic .NET Databases

Who Is This Book For?
This book is for programmers with some basic experience of Visual Basic .NET, who want to begin
programming database applications.
It might be useful if you have some limited experience of Access, although this is not strictly necessary.
Note that this book is not an introduction to Visual Basic .NET. If you are completely new to Visual
Basic .NET, you will probably find Beginning Visual Basic .NET (Wrox Press, ISBN 1861004966) a better
choice to get you off the ground.
Likewise, this book is not aimed at getting experienced VB6 developers up to speed with the changes
between VB6 and Visual Basic .NET. If you fall into this category, try Professional VB.NET (Wrox Press,
ISBN 1861004974) instead.
What Does This Book Cover?
Visual Basic .NET is tightly coupled to very comprehensive and flexible data access technologies, so the
potential range of things that might fall under the title of this book is huge. Rather than trying to cover
too much, we have concentrated on providing a detailed introduction to the following strands:
❑ Basic database design principles.
❑ The SQL Server Desktop Engine.
❑ Querying the database using T-SQL.
❑ Using Visual Studio .NET's Server Explorer to run queries, views, stored procedures, etc.
❑ ADO.NET and the DataSet object.
❑ Reading data into the DataSet, binding it to a control on the user interface, changing data in
the DataSet, and saving those changes back in the underlying database.
❑ XML's role in ADO.NET.
❑ Internet database applications using Web Forms and Web Services.

What Do I Need to Use this Book?
All you'll need is a PC running:
❑ Windows 2000, XP, or NT4 Server.
❑ IIS 5, which comes with Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

❑ Internet Explorer.
❑ Access XP (or 2000).
❑ Visual Studio .NET Professional edition. (Higher versions of Visual Studio, e.g. the Enterprise
editions, should work fine too. However, at the time of writing, they were unavailable and so
this book was written using the Professional edition.)
❑ SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine. This comes with Visual Studio .NET.
This book was written before the final release of Visual Studio .NET. If there are any
substantial changes between the instructions given in this book and those required to
work with the final release of Visual Studio .NET, we will provide free updates on the
Wrox online errata service.

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