What can I say but thank you - all for your kind responses. It's great to know that there are still like minded people out there in the world that are prepared to assist & help you if needed.

I have order a copy of SQL Server 2008 Bible from Amazon and have visited the website http://www.sqlservercentral.com as suggested a couple of you.

SSCertifiable rightly so pointed out that I talk about things but have never indicated what I was trying to do.

To put the record straight - so to speak - before retiring I was a director of a small business and several years ago the company paid someone to create a program that would create & keep customer records, create Job sheets with a automatic numbering system and then go on to finalize everything with a invoice - with all data being stored in a Database.

At the time I hadn't the time to attempt to do it myself but to keep my little grey cells going now I thought it might be an interesting little exercise to do it now I have too much time on my hands but I was, until Grasshopper pointed the way, a little confused regarding the use of VB.Net, Ado.Net, Linq etc and how it all fitted together.

Once again many thanks for all your kind responses