This book is designed to help you learn how to access databases with VB 2008, previously known as VB 9.0 and VB Orcas. The development tools used throughout this book are Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 (code-named Visual Studio Orcas) and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, both of which work with Microsoft .NET Framework version 3.5. This latest version of .NET also provides extensive support for Language Integrated Query (LINQ), and because it is an extension of the .NET Framework 3.0 (previously known as WinFX), it supports NET 3.0 features such as Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, the latest version of Visual Studio, provides functionality for building WPF,WCF, WF, and LINQ applications by using VB 2008 or other .NET languages. Visual Studio 2008 targets multiple .NET Framework versions by allowing you to build and maintain applications for .NET 2.0 and .NET 3.0 in addition to its native and default support for .NET 3.5.

Note Code names are interesting things. For example, the .NET common language runtime (CLR) was code-named Lightning because it was another milestone for Microsoft after its best-selling technology Visual Basic, which has been around since 1991 and was code-named Thunder. Visual Studio products have a specific code-name methodology based on some cities in and islands of the United States. Orcas is one of the San Juan islands, located north of Seattle.

SQL Server 2005 is one of the most advanced relational database management systems (RDBMSs) available. An exciting feature of SQL Server 2005 is the integration of the .NET CLR into the SQL Server 2005 database engine, making it possible to implement database objects using managed code written in a .NET language such as Visual C# .NET or Visual Basic .NET. Besides this, SQL Server 2005 comes with multiple services such as analysis services, data transformation services, reporting services, notification services, and Service Broker. SQL Server 2005 offers one common environment, named SQL Server Management Studio, for both database developers and database administrators (DBAs).

Note If you ever worked with SQL Server 2000, you'll recall there are two separate interfaces named SQL Server Query Analyzer and SQL Server Enterprise Manager (the latter also known as Microsoft Management Console, or MMC), which are specifically designed for database developers and database administrators, respectively.

SQL Server 2005 Express Edition is the relational database subset of SQL Server 2005 that provides virtually all the online transaction processing (OLTP) capabilities of SQL Server 2005, supports databases up to 4GB in size (and up to 32,767 databases per SQL Server Express, or SSE, instance), and can handle hundreds of concurrent users. SSE doesn't include SQL Server's data warehousing and Integration Services components. It also doesn't include business intelligence components for online analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining, because they're based on SQL Server's Analysis Services server, which is completely distinct from its relational database engine.

SQL Server 2005 Express Edition is also completely distinct from its predecessor, Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine (MSDE), which was a subset of SQL Server 2000. MSDE databases cannot be used with SSE, but they can be upgraded to SSE databases. Now that you know a little about these development tools, we'll show you how to obtain and install them and the sample databases you'll need to work through this book. In this chapter, we'll cover the following: