Having just read "Beginning Visual Basic 2005" from the same publisher and author (which I feel was a decent book to get started using VB), I moved onto this title and was very disappointed with it. The book forces you to begin your database programming using MS ACCESS, which I had no interest in doing. So, just skip those chapters right? Wrong. It really does force you down this path due to later projects in the book relying on you completing the earlier chapters. I even tried cheating by just downloading the code from the Access chapters so I could just jump into the SQL server sections. While this allowed me to continue, the book continues to make references to things I should have learned in the first 4 chapters. While, I understand the reasoning for trying to cover many different Database platforms, having Access, SQL Server, and Oracle all in the same book just leads to confusion and frustration. The "Do this for SQL server, Or do this for Oracle" examples were just a pain.