Enumerations can help you to make your code more consistent and better readable. An enumeration is group of constants which you can use to assign as a value of variable. The .NET Framework makes frequently use of enumerations. I think you will be familiar with the following concept: you can select an item from a list of possible values:
 

At the end the item of the enumeration is nothing more then an Integer or perhaps better said, a numeric value. It is not hard to create your own enumerations and assign this enumeration as datatype of a variable. Consider the following example. We define an enumeration named CityEnum, which contains two items. In the Button1_Click() event we have to deal with the city number '1'. Because we have set Option Strict On, we must cast the variable cityNumber explicit to the type CityEnum. When Option Strict is not set, you can simply assign the variable directly. As you can see, working with numeric values of enumerations is quite easy.

   1: Option Strict On

   2: 

   3: Public Class Form1

   4: 

   5:     Public Enum CityEnum

   6:         Amsterdam = 0

   7:         Seattle = 1

   8:     End Enum

   9: 

  10:     Private Sub Button1_Click() Handles Button1.Click

  11: 

  12:         Dim cityNumber As Integer = 1

  13: 

  14:         ' Use CType() if 'Option Strict On' is set

  15:         Dim selectedCity As CityEnum = CType(cityNumber, CityEnum)

  16: 

  17:         ' Do 'something' with enum (with help of IntelliSense!)

  18:         Select Case selectedCity

  19:             Case CityEnum.Amsterdam

  20:                 Console.WriteLine("People speak Dutch")

  21:             Case CityEnum.Seattle

  22:                 Console.WriteLine("People speak English")

  23:         End Select

  24: 

  25:     End Sub

  26: 

  27: End Class

 In some cases however, you don't want to deal with the Integer value of the enumeration, but with the 'readable' text value. In our case with the values 'Amsterdam' and 'Seattle'. You can imagine that your XML file is much better readable when use the descriptive values, like Amsterdam in stead of 0. In the next code sample I will show you how you can convert the values from the descriptive text to the real enumeration and vice versa. In this sample I will a fill a ComboBox with all values of our CityEnum. Only one line of code is needed. You can use the [enum].GetNames() method to retrieve all items from the enumeration.
When you select an item you want to get the real enum item based on the text. You can do this also with only one line of code! The magic happens with help of the [enum].Parse() method. In the last statement, when showing the actual message, you can see that calling the ToString() method on the variable city will give you the descriptive value of the enumeration.

   1: Private Sub Form1_Load() Handles MyBase.Load

   2: 

   3:     ' Fill a ComboBox with all items of the specified enumeration

   4:     CityComboBox.Items.AddRange([Enum].GetNames(GetType(CityEnum)))

   5: 

   6: End Sub

   7: 

   8: Private Sub CityComboBox_SelectedIndexChanged() _

   9:                                 Handles CityComboBox.SelectedIndexChanged

  10: 

  11:     Dim message As String = "People in {0} speak {1}"

  12:     Dim language As String = ""

  13: 

  14:     ' Get the name of the selected city

  15:     Dim enumString As String = CityComboBox.Text

  16: 

  17:     ' Convert the 'string' to a real 'enum' value

  18:     Dim city As CityEnum = [Enum].Parse(GetType(CityEnum), enumString)

  19: 

  20:     ' Do 'something' with enum (with help of IntelliSense!)

  21:     Select Case city

  22:         Case CityEnum.Amsterdam

  23:             language = "Dutch"

  24:         Case CityEnum.Seattle

  25:             language = "English"

  26:     End Select

  27: 

  28:     ' Show message --> call enum.ToString() to get the descriptive value

  29:     MessageBox.Show(String.Format(message, city.ToString(), language))

  30: 

  31: End Sub

Happy coding!