WELCOME TO THE INTRODUCTION. From this point on, you'll be transported into an amazing world of teenage wizards, magical furniture, creepy crawlies, evil geniuses, thrills, spills, and laughter. Oh, hang on. Sorry, that's the other book. ... Welcome to the introduction. From this point on, you'll discover the amazing world of ADO.NET, inanimate computer desks, late-night coding sessions, evil bugs, functions, methods, properties, and data. That's a bit better. The idea for this kind of book isn't new, but if you're trying to learn something for the first time, having it constantly spelled out to you in a stodgy, primary-school history-teacher-learn-these-dates-by-rote style probably won't help. Therefore, we've added one joke per 50 pages to this book to break up the monotony. :-) Actually, a confession here: Dan studiously spent four years avoiding anything to do with databases because, despite his love of things techie, he always perceived them to be even more techie than other server products and operating systems.