This series of articles includes the core information a developer needs to start to get the most out of the .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET, including tips and tricks on the new data access system (ADO.NET) and Web application system (ASP.NET). The articles focus particularly on the Visual Basic developer, but apply across all languages.

The .NET Framework includes a new data access technology named ADO.NET, an improvement to ADO. However, the classes that make up ADO.NET are different from the ADO objects that you might be familiar with. Some changes must be made to existing ADO applications to convert them to ADO.NET.

In this chapter you will learn how to open a database connection and perform common database operations such as inserting, updating, and deleting database records. How to use a DataReader to represent records retrieved from a database table.

Learn how ADO.NET not only supports relational data through the data provider, DataSet, and Adapter architecture, but also adds support for all types of nonrelational data through its integration with XML.