This book does cover using databases in VB 2008, but it is let down in the fact that the Try It Out exercises are not consistant in syle. In some places the examples can be seen to have been copied from the C# book. Assuming that the book is aimed as people who already know VB there are two chapters the are not needed, one on how to write a VB Form project, and one on ASP .NET which have nothing to do with databases.