In Visual Studio and VB.NET, I use SqlClient, specially made for connecting to SQL Server in .NET.  It is supposed to have better performance due to the lack of any intermediate layers like ODBC or OLE DB.  Sample code below.  It uses connection string, connection object, etc., similar to how ADO does it.

Kevin

Does this setup a read/write connection?  ... or is this read only?  What are the limitations using this method?

Also; I have no experience using .NET.  I have installed Visual Studio on my computer, but I really don't understand how to use it.  Are there any good resources for learning to use .NET?

I have watched the VB.NET lessons from this site, but it didn't explain anything.  I think there was an assumption that people just know how to use it.

Thanks,

-Raymond

Raymond  The code I showed is indeed for read-only operations.  To read and write, you need to use another object called DataTable.

The VB.NET lessons on this site try to copy the the old lessons of VB6, which were done the same way.  Richard made those many years ago, and VB6 was much simpler than VB.Net.

If you are well-versed in Access, it should not be too much trouble learning VB.NET on your own (at least mostly on your own), which was what I did.  There is still going to be a learning curve, but having a good knowledge of Access gives you a good foundation and fortitude to deal with that difficulty.

One way to learn is make a simple app with VB.NET.  The screenshot below is a calculator app I made.   Visual Studio has an excellent code editor that gives you lots of help.  It flags way more errors than Access does, tells you how to fix errors (often with sample code), marks locations of errors on the scrollbar, etc.

VB.NET shares much of the same syntax as VBA, but also differs a lot with VBA.  In VB.NET, you can declare a variable and assign a value at the same time:   Dim i As Integer = 100

VB.NET can increment a variable with "increment operators": +=, -=, &=, etc.:
x += 1 is the same as x = x + 1
s &= "ABC" is the same as s = s & "ABC"

VB.NET uses the "?" sign to stand for nullible variables.  For instance:

     rs?.Close()

is the same as:

     If Not rs Is Nothing Then rs.Close


But the most useful thing about VB.NET is that it can write web apps too.  Below is web app version of the calculator, and it uses basically the same VB code.  If you need to convert a desktop app to web app, VB.NET gives you an big advantage.  Richard recently wrote about the failure of Access web apps ( https://599cd.com/blog/display-comment.asp?CommentID=114307 ), mainly because VBA isn't "portable" to other platforms.  But VB.NET lets you reuse code from one platform in another, thus saving you time in development.

Another crucial difference shown above is that I don't have to use ten different OnClick event procedures for the ten buttons on the calculator.  One procedure does it all.

Kevin

Thanks for the responses.  I will be working on learning VB.NET

Any additional learning resources would be greatly appreciated.  

-Raymond