Beginning ASP.NET 4 in VB 2010

Chapter 21. Profiles

You can store information for the users of your website in a variety of ways. In Chapter 8, you learned how to use techniques such as view state, session state, and cookies to keep track of information for a short period of time. But if you need to store information between visits, the only realistic option is a server-side database. Using the ADO.NET skills you've learned so far, it's fairly easy to save information such as customer addresses and user preferences in a database and retrieve it later.

The only problem with the database approach is that it's up to you to write all the code for retrieving information and updating records. This code isn't terribly complex—Chapter 14 covers everything you need to know—but it can ...