Good practice when working with objects using SQLServer as a secure store.

I'm sure this has been asked plenty of times before, so I'm after a link to a good answer.

I have tens of thousands of milk crates, holding dozens of different types of milk in hundreds of locations. I am used to working with objects but not databases. For this situation however I want the security of SQLServer transactions to track, for example, when a robot moves a crate from one location to another.

I am thinking of using SQLServer as a store. On startup I want to get my ecosystem of objects out of the store. While I am running, I'll just use objects. When I change an object property I want it to securely persist. I don't want to snapshot the whole menagerie of object states, just update the values that changed. Which will sometimes include the addition or deletion of objects. How do I do this Is there an example somewhere that does this (or approximately this)

I use VB and have Visual Studio 2005. (Which, by the way, is stunning. I thought all that "you will use less time and code more and better" talk was just hype. But its for real. Amazing product.)

tia

John