You won't get far as a Visual Basic developer unless you know how to write database applications. That's where this book comes in. It shows you how to use Visual Studio 2008 and ADO.NET 3.5 to develop database applications the way the best professionals do. That includes the full gamut of skills you need, from using prototyping features that generate ADO.NET code...to writing your own ADO.NET code from scratch so you can closely control how the database processing works...to using .NET 3.5 features like LINQ and the ADO.NET Entity Framework that actually change the way you think about handling data. What's more, this book takes you from beginner to database professional in a logical progression that makes each step easier to master: In section 1, you will get a basic introduction to databases, SQL, and ADO.NET. If you already have ADO.NET experience, you can skip ahead. In section 2, you will quickly be prototyping database applications using Rapid Application Development (RAD) tools like data sources. In section 3, you will learn how to build 3-layer applications the ways the pros do, with presentation, business, and database classes. This is where you'll get into ADO.NET coding to create your own database classes. Section 4 covers LINQ (Language-Integrated Query), a .NET 3.5 feature that lets you handle all types of data using a query language that's integrated into Visual Basic and that saves you a lot of ADO.NET coding. That means you'll learn how to: Use LINQ to DataSet to query the data in typed or untyped datasets; Use LINQ to SQL, which allows you to generate an object model from the objects in a SQL Server database that can then be used to access and update the database data...a feature that offers you some of the same benefits as the Entity Framework; Use LINQ to XML to manipulate XML data much more easily than you can using the Document Object Model; Use LINQ data source controls with web applications. In section 5, you will learn to work with the ADO.NET Entity Framework...another way to let .NET generate the code you need and do more of the work for you. Using this feature, you create an Entity Data Model that defines a conceptual model for the business objects used by an application, a storage model for the objects in a database, and mappings that relate the two. Then: You can use LINQ or a special form of SQL to retrieve data into the business objects; You can work with the business objects and save changes to the database using generated code; You can use Entity data source controls with web applications.