populate dropdown with database

I am new to VS.net and havent programmed in about a year, so there are some pretty interesting new items Im trying to figure out here...

I am trying to populate a dropdown box with information from a database -- and basically using a sql statement call to get the info back.

I, however, have no idea how the OledbAdapter, etc. stuff works...

Does anyone know a good tutorial or can anyone show me how to handle this please? I am trying to access an Oracle db through Ole I guess... ODBC doesnt seem to want to work with VS.net...

Thanks in advance.

Simple example in VB.NET

Dim objDS As New DataSet
Dim objDA As New OleDb.OleDbDataAdapter
Dim dbconn As OleDb.OleDbConnection
Dim sqlconstr As String = "insert db connection string here"

dbconn = New OleDb.OleDbConnection(sqlconstr)

strSql= "select userid, name, surname from names;"
objDA = New OleDb.OleDbDataAdapter(strSql, dbconn)
objDA.Fill(objDS, "mynames")

' Set up the Combo
Dim dt1 As DataTable = objDS.Tables("mynames")

Me.combobox.DataSource = dt1
Me.combobox.DisplayMember = "name"
Me.combobox.ValueMember = "userid"

A great book is:

Programming with Microsoft Visual Basic.NET

This is that book that I used in my senior level VS.NET programming class. It is really good at walking you through step-by-step and it covers a little bit of everything.

Good Luck!!