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Visual Basic.NET Database Programming Review by Bob Hoffman
If you are ready for it
This is a great book for breaking into ADO.net, if:
(1) You are familiar with VB.NET and RDBMS concepts and have programmed production database applications with VB6 or other older technologies.
(2) You are not familiar with ADO.net or at least not enough to put an actual application together.
This book will provide a quick, yet thorough, path to fluency using WINFORMs with SQL Server using ADO.net. You have to read the necessary text and code samples thoroughly, and probably repeatedly.
ADO.net is the most powerful and elegant database technology from Microsoft so far. It is very productive if you understand and apply it fully.
The entire book is useful and well written, but the following chapters, in my opinion, are the salient ones for an experienced programmer trying to understand ADO.net:
Chapter 5 - Datasets. ADO.net represents an application's view of RDBMS data as an "in memory database" called a Dataset, complete with various mechanisms for tracking all aspects of transaction processing. Understand this new model completely.
Chapter 6 - Database Connections. The DataAdapter is the new class used for carrying out the actual transactions. Understand it and its associated classes thoroughly. Each DataAdapter contains and carries out commands for Retrieving (Filling), Inserting, Updating, and Deleting sets of rows for a specific DataTable of a Dataset. These commands are most conveniently built by the CommandBuilder. Once you understand this last sentence, you are in good shape.
Chapter 8 - Bound Controls are largely the same as old ADO, but be aware of how a Datagrid bound to a Datatable, when used properly, automates implementation of line items such as order lines.
Chapter 10 is the first chapter that pulls it all together into an operating Windows Form application. Once you understand how the Dataset and DataAdapter families of classes are used here, you are well on your way. You might even start with this chapter for HOW it works and then refer back to the earlier chapters for WHY it works.
Chapters 11 and 12 expand to a robust application of production quality, introducing the necessary multiuser hooks and better UI for queries.