Forgive me for a being a little off topic yet again , but this is interesting:
What is the "inverse square root" of a number , and how the hell are you using it in db?!
I think you do indeed have bit manupilation in vb, there is a convirt into bytes function, and then you use an erray loop and do your and xor not or whatever right using vb code itself.
What kind of bit manupulation are you talking about?!
Edit:
This is sad: vb indeed has no way to convirt numbers into a bit array unless you do it yourself ( I beleave convirt using hex() first )
However: the vb's and or xor not opperators actualy do bit compare, read the msdn on it , its at the bottom of each page.