Paul,
My friends and I are using both VB.NET and C# for our development. We decided that we would allow each other to program in their strongest language.
We are using a MySQL Database Engine (Original testing was done using OLEDB), and are programatically loading and saving the data into the CuteEditor from the database. The reason why we are programatically doing this is because of a large amount of validation that we need to do.
When storing the text, we are using INSERT and UPDATE statements. So far, this has worked very well for us. By the way, since MySQLDB is similar to OLEDB (and probably SQLDB), we are using Connection (with connection string), Command, and ExecuteCommand.
Last note, when extracting the data from the CuteEditor, we are using the Method, CleanUpHTMLCode, then using the property, XHTML, to extract the data from the CuteEditor.
Let me know if you want more specifics...