Having not done any serious programming in the past 4 years, I am slowly re-programming my brain from VB6 to VB.NET with a bit of help from "Beginning VB.NET" which has been most helpful.

I am wanting to write a database application, the one area in which this otherwise fine book falls down (IMO) is that it deals very little with connecting to Access - other than how to bind a control but doesn't really touch on editing, adding, deleting records etc.

The following chapter (16) touches more on this, but only for SQL / MSDE databases. From what I can ascertain, MS is pretty much going to do away with Access in support of MSDE (Small) and SQL (Large) database access.

My question is, is the above correct more or less? And in which case, am I best off at this stage forgetting about Access as my preferred database choice and going straight to MSDE? The applications I am intially looking at writing are going to be single user only, so having the ability to serve 25 concurrent users (or even 2 for that matter) really is neither here nor there for me. In addition, the databases are not going to be that large that the added performance of MSDE or SQL is going to make all that much difference.

Thanks in advance for any advice.