in great detail for the rookies... like me

Question

Okay, I've read in the forums quite a lot about writing a connection string that you can use throughout a site using a class. I also see a lot of people asking for clarification on how to actually do this in either SQL Server or Access. I'm probably one of those people. I've been developing in ASP for many years but I'm pretty new to ASP.NET so I really need a kick start here too. What would be great here is if someone could provide a scenario based on something that can be implimented easily by a rookie. I'm sure whoever does this will get a million thanks. The scenario should be start to finish, from creating the connection to writing the data to a page. This might be asking a lot but like I said you'll get many thanks. Take everything into consideration, servername(SampleServer), databasetype(SQL or Access), databasename(SampleDBName), permissions, tablename(SampleTblName), columns(column1, column2, etc...), a queryString from pagename.aspx showing how to use the data in a dropdownList, or a checkBoxList, or even just writing it into the middle of a sentence., and closing the connection when done. Going from start to finish would really help. I know a lot has been written on this topic, but it's sometimes hard to decypher for a newbie. Better yet, is there a good tutorial on this somewhere? One that goes step by step and explains in detail how to accomplish this task. This is all second nature in ASP, but... Oh well, just a thought.