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Microsoft .NET is a platform for building, running, and
experiencing the next generation of distributed
applications. It is a programming model that facilitates
developers to fabricate applications and Web services. The
.NET Framework is a new computing platform designed to
simplify application development in the highly distributed
environment of the Internet.
Using the .NET Framework, Microsoft Visual Basic developers
can build robust applications that were very difficult to
write in previous versions of Visual Basic. Visual Basic
.NET is the result of a significant rebuild of Visual Basic
for the Microsoft .NET Framework. There are a number of
changes that make Visual Basic .NET easier to use, more
powerful than Visual Basic 6.0, and give it the kind of
access to system resources that in the past required the use
of languages like C++.
To whom this book aimed for?
This book “Introduction to Visual Basic Using .NET” gives an
innovative dimension of practical approach to programming in
VB.NET. This book emphasizes the VB.NET language. This book
is a part of the Integrated .NET Series from Object
Innovations and Prentice Hall PTR. This book provides
systematic exposure to the VB.NET language from the
foundation.
This book introduces object-oriented concepts early and
includes a case study on object-oriented programming. This
book is appropriate for programmers who do not already have
a strong background in object-oriented programming. This
book is perfect for programmers who have basic knowledge in
languages such as Visual Basic and COBOL programmers. But
previous knowledge of Visual Basic is not indispensable.
This book is not only for the beginners but also aims for
experienced programmers by providing a concrete, concise and
in-depth introduction to VB.NET with a lot of example
programs. This book provides a comprehensive and broad
vision to VB.NET programming so it is ideal to be used as a
College textbook. The book presents the concept of
object-oriented programming and talk about the important
elements of object-oriented analysis and includes a case
study.
Visual Basic.NET has many new and improved language features
such as inheritance, interfaces, and overloading that make
it a powerful object-oriented programming language. As well,
Visual Basic developers can now create multithreaded,
scalable applications using explicit multithreading. Other
new language features in Visual Basic.NET are structured
exception handling, custom attributes, and Common Language
Specification (CLS) compliance.
One of the biggest enhancements in the .Net platform is the
ability to use Inheritance. VB5 introduced "interface
inheritance" which allowed VB developers the ability to
extend existing objects. Unfortunately it only provided
access to the interface and not the underlying
implementation. With VB.Net we now have full inheritance.
This book scrutinizes all the above said features in
detailed manner. This book provides thorough coverage of all
these features. |The book examines several important
interactions between VB.NET and the .NET Framework, and
includes an introduction to major .NET classes for
collections, files, databases, and threads.
Organization of this Book:
This book is organized into five major parts and is
structured to make it easy for you to isolate what you most
need to know.
Part1 – Introduction to .NET and VB.NET
Part 2 – VB.NET as a Visual Basic Language.
Part 3 – Object-Oriented Programming in VB.NET.
Part 4 – Windows Programming in VB.NET.
Part-5 – VB.NET and the .NET Framework.
Let us observe these five parts in detail.
The Part1 offers an orientation to the overall architecture
and features of .NET and VB.NET. The first Chapter .NET
Framework provides a fine introduction to .NET Framework.
It's the first solid step, which will enable Microsoft
dominant the Internet Age. The .NET has really dived deep
into the problems faced by today's programmers and tried to
give solution to these in the new platform. To the Beginners
this chapter will give a clear picture over .NET. The
second chapter gives a short introduction to practical
programming in VB.NET. In this chapter one can gain
knowledge of the rudiment of programming in VB.NET.
To build classic, high-performing desktop applications and
Enterprise Web applications Visual Studio is a complete
suite. Visual Studio includes powerful component-based
development tools as well as a number of additional
technologies to simplify team-based design, development, and
deployment of Enterprise solutions. One can learn about this
Visual studio in the third chapter "Visual Studio.NET".
These chapters will equip you to use Visual Studio
throughout the rest of the book.
The Part2 presents the core features of VB.NET. The chapter
4, " Fundamentals of VB.NET" talks about the simple data
types available in VB.NET and inspects how they relate to
the underlying .NET Common system. Visual Basic.NET
introduces three new data types namely Char Data type, Short
Data type and Decimal Data type. The Currency data type used
in VB6 is not supported in Visual Basic.NET. Using the new
Decimal data type, which can handle more digits on both
sides of the decimal point, for all money variables and
calculations.
In Visual Basic 6.0, a Date is stored in a Double format
using four bytes. In Visual Basic.NET, Date uses the common
language runtime DateTime data type, which is an eight-byte
integer value. VB.NET introduces several operators that are
new to VB6 programmers. Likewise there are many Data Type
Changes in Visual Basic6 to VB.NET. One can gain knowledge
of all such information in this chapter. From chapter five
to seven you can get the information such as different
control structures, Procedures and Advanced data types. The
eighth chapter VB.NET Utility functions examines several
types of utility functions available to VB.NET programmers,
including common mathematical operations, financial
functions, and character and string manipulation operations.
The ninth chapter Exceptional Handling provides information
such as VB.NET Exceptional Handling and about
System.Exception.
The Part 3 examines the object-oriented features of VB.NET.
Visual Basic.NET supports many new or improved
object-oriented language features such as inheritance,
overloading, the Overrides keyword, interfaces, shared
members, and constructors. The five chapters in this part
provide an in-depth coverage of object oriented features of
VB.NET. Even the readers with out strong background of OOP
can achieve thorough knowledge of object oriented features
of VB.NET.
The Part 4 gives details about Windows Programming in VB.NET.
Windows Forms is the new platform for Microsoft Windows
application development, based on the .NET Framework. This
framework provides a clear, object-oriented, extensible set
of classes that enables you to develop rich Windows
applications. The System.Windows.Forms namespace contains
classes for creating Windows-based applications that take
full advantage of the rich user interface features available
in the Microsoft Windows operating system. The three
chapters in this part 4 provide a systematic coverage on the
core topics such as Windows Forms, including form design,
controls, events, menus, toolbars, and dialogs.
The Part 5 explores the relationship between VB.NET and the
.NET Frame work. The chapter 18 examines the topics such as
Arrays, Interfaces and Delegates in an in-depth approach.
Delegates – Type safe, object-oriented call back functions
which encapsulate a reference to a method inside a delegate
object. One can gain all such information in this chapter.
The .NET framework class library provides an extensive set
of classes for working with collection of objects. These
classes are in the System.Collections namespace and
implement a number of different kinds of collections,
including lists, queues, stacks, arrays and hash tables. The
chapter 19 gives details systematically about these .NET
Collections.
Database access is an important topic. The .NET Framework
provides database support with a new database technology
known as ADO.NET. There are two central components of
ADO.NET that accomplish data access: the DataSet, and the
.NET data provider, which is a set of components including
the Connection, Command, DataReader, and DataAdapter
objects. The Dataset consists of a collection of DataTable
objects that you can relate to each other with DataRelation
objects. Data adapter are an integral part of ADO.NET
managed providers, the set of objects used to communicate
between a data source and a dataset. You can access data
sources in either a connected or disconnected mode. The
chapter 20 guides you step by step and give a clear picture
about all these topics in an excellent way. The chapter 21
gives you the information about the usage of the new I/O
features provided by the .NET Frame work System.IO
namespace. The chapter 22 covers some advanced features such
as StringBuilder class, Multi Thread Programming, Attribute
and reflection.
The last chapter 23 Components and Assemblies provides the
knowledge such as how to build components using Visual
Studio.NET and using Command line. COM developers can
leverage their knowledge for the next generation of
components to be built for Microsoft's new .NET framework.
In the end of the chapter, it provides the information how
to use existing COM objects (Unmanaged) within managed
applications and expose-managed objects to existing COM
(Unmanaged) applications. In the Appendix, a case study
illustrates many object-oriented features of VB.NET in a
nice manner.
As a Conclusion this book clearly defines in-depth,
example-rich and provides a hands on introduction to the
VB.NET using .NET. Using real-world examples and a detailed
case study, this book helps you to master in VB.NET from the
ground up or rapidly migrate to VB.NET from earlier versions
of Visual Basic.
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