OK, I nearly get it. After a bit more messing about with SharpDevelop, and (of course) help from M@, I’ve succeeded in writing an application that will query a database on your local network, parse the output fields from various SQL statements, format them as encoded requests, and post them to a particular web address. Useful for updating online product databases without any technical know-how.
So, I know it’s early days, and I’ve got a long way to go, but this software stuff continues to enthrall me! And with downloading the latest Ubuntu release, I’ve got plenty of geeky toys to be playing with at the moment.