Fill Method with a big DB connected through the internet

Hi everybody,
I've just switched to VB .NET 2008 from MS Access 2007
I'm working as an applications developer for a number of companies. I make programs that access big databases through the Internet (by big, I mean a large number of rows)
In Access, connecting through the internet was so smooth since it reads only the current record while allowing searching, filtering, updating, etc...
When I used VB .NET, I found that the dataset is filled with all the records up on loading the form, and this would make the program extremely slow (it will take 10minutes+ to start!!!)
I read about using a datareader, but, does the datareader allow full sorting, updating, and filtering just like the dataset?
In a simple sentence, how can I implement the same data access model of MS Access?

Thank you.

hi fifo_thekid

First of all you are Combining two things that are not the same. VB is a Language and Access is a RDBMS. :)

Secondly using Datasets will definately make your application to be slow if you retrieve un-needed data. i suggest you make a decision before retrieving data, because if you pull the whole table your application will be obviously slow. now a reader will not solve your Problem, a Reader is a Forward-only recordset and it cannot be updated, its used for readonly purpose and if its not used wisely too, it can make the application Slow.

In a simple sentence, how can I implement the same data access model of MS Access?

Plan you Application, make sure youi retrive data that your application needs. Dataset can be very good if they are used Wisely, i use datasets all the time, but my Application will never be slow because if am interested in the records that has a City "New York" , why should i retrieve the records that have a City "Hong kong" ?