Thank you both for your suggestions. I got the "Instant asp.net applications" book. It has a lot of practical examples; a very good book and I got it on the Amazon marketplace for £3 practically new. An even better book I have found with good practical examples is "ASP.NET Everyday Apps for Dummies" the book has a lot of useful practical projects including login pages, shopping carts, blogs. The book goes through each project easy to understand from Functional Design - how the pages link to each other, and the flow of control throughout the application. To the data design and the specification of the tables and relationships for the application (including the SQL code to make the database, just copy from the CD and click "execute" and you've got the database you need) then on to the coding - both the asp.net pages and the background code. This is probably the best book i've found for learning ASP.NET. Its so much easier to learn when you've got a practical example, rather than reading about the different controls and their properties like most books on the subject.

I am trying to learn ADO.NET but making slow progress. I have 2 or three books on the subject but I am finding it difficult to learn about all the different components without applying them to a real life practical example. Can anyone recommend a book or a web site that leads by providing practical examples of real life applications and then shows how all the ado.net components fit together and work to make this application work? I have been googling and searching on amazon for ages but can't find anything. If anyone has any recommendations I would be very grateful.