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Microsoft .NET is a platform for building, running,
deploying 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. 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.
Microsoft Visual Basic has been used as the crucial rapid
application development tool for Windows applications. 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. 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.
To whom this book aimed for?
This book “Application Development using Visual Basic and
.NET” gives an innovative dimension of pragmatic approach to
application development using VB. NET. This book is a part
of the Integrated .NET Series from Object Innovations and
Prentice Hall PTR. This book provides methodical exposure to
the VB .NET language from the foundation. This book is
appropriate for experienced programmers, providing a
concrete, concise and in-depth introduction to VB. NET with
a lot of example programs and case studies that continues
through many of the chapters.
This book covers all the essential topics of VB .NET in
detail along with thrilling case studies. The book wraps
the topics such as .NET Fundamentals, VB .NET language
essentials, Inheritance, Exceptions, Collections,
Interfaces, Events, Attributes, Windows Forms, Windows Forms
Controls, GDI+, ADO.NET, ASP.NET, Web Forms, Web services,
Interoperability, Security and more!
Organization of this Book:
This book is organized into six major parts and is
structured to make it easy for you to navigate to what you
need to learn.
Part 1 – .NET Architecture Overview
Part 2 – VB .NET Language
Part 3 – Fundamentals of Windows Forms
Part 4 – Fundamentals of .NET Framework
Part 5 – Advanced UI programming using VB .NET
Part 6 – .NET Applications
Let us observe these six parts in detail.
The Part1 offers an orientation to the overall architecture
and features of .NET. The first two chapters, provides a
fine introduction to .NET Framework and the programming
model of the .NET Framework.
The Part2 presents the core features of VB .NET. The
chapters 3-6, talks about VB .NET programming language
including data types, object oriented programming features
available in VB .NET and inspects the interactions between
VB .NET and .NET Framework. 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 third chapter in this
part provides an in-depth coverage of object oriented
features of VB .NET. The running Acme Travel Agency case
study is introduced in chapter 5, which will give you a
clear picture about how concepts work together when you
build .NET applications.
Part3 covers the fundamentals of Windows Forms. 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. Chapters 7 and 8 provides a
systematic coverage on the core topics such as Windows
Forms, including Form design, controls, events, menus,
toolbars, dialog boxes etc.
The Part 4 gives details about fundamental topics in .NET
framework. Chapter 9 explains about assemblies and
deployment in detail. The chapter 10 provides a systematic
coverage on the core topics such as metadata, serialization,
threading, attributes, asynchronous programming, remoting,
memory management etc.
The Part 5 explores the advanced topics in UI programming
with VB .NET. The chapter 11 examines the topic GDI+ in an
in-depth approach. Chapter 12 speaks about some advanced
topics such as MDI, visual Inheritance, ActiveX controls in
.NET applications etc.
Part 6, consisting of chapters 13 to 17, cover central parts
of the .NET framework that are constructive during realistic
application development using VB .NET. 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. You can access data
sources in either a connected or disconnected mode. The
chapter 13 guides you step by step and give a clear picture
about all these topics in an excellent way. The chapter 14
gives you the information about the fundamentals of ASP.NET,
including the ASP.NET architecture, server controls,
configuration, database access, state in ASP.NET
applications etc. The chapter 15 covers some advanced useful
topics such as SOAP and Web services, which is in the path
of revolutionizing the software world. Web services provide
a robust mechanism for heterogeneous systems to
interoperate. The chapter 16 covers .NET security in detail.
It covers all the vital topics including User-Based, Code
Access security, Role-Based security etc. The final
chapter17 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, the topics such as Visual
Studio .NET and Tracing and Debugging techniques in .NET are
covered nicely.
As a Conclusion this book gives all the necessary details to
develop realistic enterprise applications using VB .NET. It
gives experienced developers the practical insight they need
to build applications in a pragmatic way. In-depth coverage
of .NET framework, Windows Forms, ADO.NET, GDI+, ASP.NET Web
Forms, Web services makes this book unique. This book covers
all the essential topics in a comprehensive, clear,
example-rich practical way for experienced developers! |
