Hi, Logical1!
What IR said is right on. .Net makes it waaaaaaay easier.
I'd never bothered to use MySQL in VB, before, so I figured I'd give it a shot. It was actually really cool!
Here are the resources that I used. The one I think would be most useful is first -- provided you decide to use .Net. If you've never used databases in VB.Net, make sure you at least read page 3 of the first article.
VB.Net MySQL Tutorial
MySQL.com - Connector/Net Docs
MySQL.com - How to Load and Search MySQL Using VB.Net
MySQL.com - Storing Connection Strings (kind of a side topic)
Dev.MySQL.com also has articles for Connector/ODBC, if you go with VB6.