Visual Basic® .NET Database Programming

Introduction

Simply put, a database is a piece of software that lets a program store and retrieve data. Usually programmers think of the database as also including the actual data stored on a hard disk or some other media. Sometimes developers think of the database as only including the data. That makes some sense when you speak of backing up the database because you only back up the data, not the data access software. But because the data isn’t useful without the data access routines, it makes the most sense to think of the two pieces together as shown in Figure I.1.

Figure I.1. A database includes stored data and data access software.

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