You can do a lot with Visual Basic by itself, but ultimately, you have to have data to build most systems. VB .NET is designed to work with a new way to access data: ADO .NET.

The name "ADO .NET" was invented by Microsoft Marketing and you should not conclude that it's "just like ADO". Like VB .NET itself, ADO .NET is a completely new product with only a surface similarity to earlier versions. That's why it doesn't really matter that ADO once stood for ActiveX Data Objects. It doesn't stand for that anymore.

In this series, we're going to learn ADO .NET literally from the ground up - slowly and carefully. The series will be presented in "byte sized" articles rather than trying to tell the story all at once. Also, important issues that you have to know, but are not part of the main focus, are presented as "DYK" articles so you can read them if you need to, or get on to the main topic if you don't.

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About.com also has a database focused site at databases.about.com. This series will focus on the VB .NET language aspects of ADO .NET. Go to About Databases for more information 'About' building and using databases.

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Here's the broad overview of ADO .NET. The simplest definition of ADO .NET is that it is Microsoft's new object library for data access. In one way, this is just the most recent of Microsoft's access methods (previous products were DAO, RDO and ADO). But in another way, this is a new revolution in software like the other .NET products. Prepare to bend your mind.