Most applications manipulate data in some way. Visual Basic .NET applications often manipulate data that come from relational databases. To do this, your application needs to interface with relational database software such as Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, or Sybase.

Visual Studio 2005 provides the data access tools and wizards to connect to these databases and retrieve and update their data. In this chapter, you will look at some of these tools and wizards and use them to retrieve data from a database.

In this chapter, you will:

• Learn what a database really is

• Examine the SQL SELECT statement

• Examine data access components

• Examine data binding in Windows Forms

• Use the data access wizards in Visual Studio 2005

Chapter 10.1: What Is a Database?

Chapter 10.2: The SQL SELECT Statement

Chapter 10.3: Queries in Access

Chapter 10.4: Data Access Components

Chapter 10.5: Data Binding

Chapter 10.6: Summary