Customer Reviews

Doing Objects in Visual Basic 2005

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a great book to learn how to build a VB win form app from start to finish utilizing a cohesive object oriented framework. It covers virtually every aspect from design philosophy, creation of the application tiers (UI, business and data), designing the DB and SPs, error handling, validation and host of other subjects.

The book is only 518 pages but it packs a lot of info. The concepts were presented clearly and they were easy to understand and implement; in addition there were quite a lot of helpful tips.

It happened that I was just starting an application while I was reading this book so I decided to go ahead and use her framework and a number of the design patterns - It worked very well, I found one minor error in the sample code and I made some modifications to implement some additional features but the code basically worked out of the box. If you do use her object model in an application and the business objects are based on database tables I would recommend purchasing Codesmith (a code generation tool) or a similar product before starting your project since creating the business layer is fairly code intensive. With Codesmith you can create her basic class structure as a template and it will generate the code for the business and data access layers based on the table.

Now that I have the first app under my belt I plan to use the framework on any future win form apps that I develop.

I highly recommend this book for lower intermediates to advanced developers; if you're completely new to VB this could be a little over your head.

I have totally enjoyed this book. So much so that in my leisure I have opted to work through it a second time. Being a .Net programmer and just beginning to leverage the power object programming: I found the book exhilrating.
I never knew how she was going to pull together: like replacing hard-coded item for database tables.
My only disappointment was that the book ended a little too soon. I would have like to have to have seen somewhat more of a data-entry application.

Stephan Onisick; VB/SQL Consultant

This is the best book on object oriented programming in VB.NET I've ever read, bar none.

Kurata's writing is so approachable (yet comprehensive) that reading this book was an actual pleasure. The example "Purchase Tracker" application "build along" she uses was especially well done - it illustrated key points very well with just the right amount of detail.

I disagree with the assertion that this is an advanced course in VB.NET 2005; I would contend that it is perfectly aimed at the huge "sweet spot" of VB programmers right now who've been transitioning to .NET and who've had to pick up .NET as best they can while being expected to keep up (or increase) the pace on their ongoing development projects. Get this book, read it over a week of evenings (it'll take you about a week or so of evenings to get through it with the examples), and you'll come out the end a significantly better developer.

If you're a working coder it'll be an interesting week too: each morning you'll get to work, look at your previous day's code, and immediately have ways to improve what you did just hours before.

Kurata's book is an advanced course in Visual Basic 2005. It assumes you already the basic syntax down, so it doesn't waste any space going over that. Instead, it plunges immediately into object oriented design and coding.

At the design level, the discussion is largely independent of VB2005 and the .NET framework, as it should be. You learn the general approach of an n-tier architecture. Often into a presentation layer, a business logic layer and a data access layer. There's even a brief foray into explaining a Service Oriented Architecture.

The bulk of the text then goes into coding out a design. Here is where the strong support that Visual Studio gives the programmer comes into play. The utilities are numerous, and encompass a comprehensive framework. From writing code to compiling and running it. For a reader new to all this, the easiest aspect to appreciate might be when writing the presentation layer. Visual Studio has an easy graphical way for you to put together the various widgets that you want in this layer. Plus, and just as importantly, Visual Studio autogenerates much of the corresponding code - all the pure boilerplate, that would otherwise be tedious and error-prone for you to do.

If I can change the rating, it would be 4 out of 5 only, Amazon won't let me change it. The reason for that is the methodology (GUIDS) used alone. I think I can use that in my work. The chapter on interface layer is also good, but might confuse a beginner vb.net programmer. Overall the book is great, however, the chapter on business layer is not what i have expected. It delved on interfaces and state management of object for most of the chapter, but seems to be getting nowhere with the sample. I will have to read the chapter again to understand it fully, as I got lost in the process. I was actually expecting object collaboration on this chapter, but that was left out, so what's really the purpose of business layer chapter then? I will not recommend this book to novice programmers. For a much better discussion on object-oriented approach with clear explanation on 3-tier from the ground up, I highly recommend Dan Clark's Beginning Object-Oriented Programming using VB2005 book.

I have been using Ms. Kurata's book at work in making the transition from VB 6.0 to Visual Basic 2005. I find her explanations easy to understand and her examples immediately relevant to the work I am doing. I have a library of reference books on the subject, but lately I have found myself regularly referring to this book to quickly jog my memory on topics such as creating property statements and custom event handlers. This book packs a lot of knowledge into a well-written concise package.

Ms. Kurata's book is similar to Tim Patrick's book, which is another of my recent favorites that I also recommend.
Start-to-Finish Visual Basic 2005: Learn Visual Basic 2005 as You Design and Develop a Complete Application (The Addison-Wesley Microsoft Technology Series)

After searching long and hard for a book about business objects and databinding, I stumbled across this one. It gives you a good starting point and makes you think in a Object Orientated way. Lots of reuseable code and the presentation was good. I like a book that you can read and do a project at the same time.

However, I thought the book ended abruptly and left things a little undone. Furthermore, I would of liked it to go into more detail on sorting and filter business objects since this is a major issue.

In all, this was a great buy and I'll be referencing it for a while.

**** 4 Stars for Deborah Kurata ****

This book accomplishes a few useful things:

First of all, this book teaches you Object-Oriented development concepts, such as what Object-Oriented programming is, the basic elements of Object-Oriented architecture, and the benefits of using an Object-Oriented approach.

It also teaches you how to design software using the GUIDS Methodology: Goal-centered design (includes use cases, scenarios, business object identification, and domain model), User Interface design, Implementation-Centered design, Data design, and Strategies for construction.

Additionally, this book teaches you how to implement N-Tier architecture in an application, and explains its benefits. The N-Tier approach in this book is comprised of a Presentation Layer, Business Layer and a Data Access Layer.

A downside to this book is that it leaves you short of having a fully functional application, supporting record sorting and filtering, which, in my opinion, is a fundamental element of data presentation.


Additional Comments:

Being an ADO.NET proponent, and competent in extending ADO.NET, I found the OOP approach demonstrated in this book to be (frankly) a lot of work. A lot of the code that goes into this approach can be significantly reduced using ADO.NET. Furthermore, ADO.NET requires much less time to become proficient in, and faster to develop.

Here's a simple example that creates a Customer Class:

Public Class Customer


Public Sub New(ByVal customerName As String)

Me.Name = customerName

End Sub


Private m_Name As String
Public Property Name() As String

Get

Return m_Name

End Get

Set(ByVal value As String)

m_Name = value

End Set

End Property


End Class


A customer can be created like this:

Dim c As New Customer("Chili's Grill & Bar")


Now, how do you get a list of Customers? You have to use List(Of Type):

'Create a list
Dim customerList As New List(Of Customer)

'Add Customers
customerList.Add(New Customer("Chili's Grill & Bar"))
customerList.Add(New Customer("Dickey's BBQ Pit"))
customerList.Add(New Customer("La Hacienda Ranch"))


My Next question is, How do you handle sorting in a List(Of Type)? You may be tempted to, Well, Sort() of course!

customerList.Sort()

However, if you did not implement the IComparable interface in the Customer class, then you cannot use the Sort method... Any other ideas?


Now, what about filtering? How do you filter a List(Of Type)?

...


Put it this way, if you want to be able to bind the list to a control, like a DataGridView, and then have the list sorted when a DataGridViewColumn header is clicked, then you need to do some programming to implement the IBindingList interface. And then what if you want to do advanced sorting and filtering? You need to implement the IBindingListView... That's quite a bit of programming!


But life is MUCH easier with ADO.NET!

'ADO.NET (Create a Customer table and add a Name column)
Dim table As New DataTable("Customer")
table.Columns.Add("Name")

'Add 3 customers to the table
table.Rows.Add("La Hacienda Ranch")
table.Rows.Add("Chili's Grill & Bar")
table.Rows.Add("Dickey's BBQ Pit")

'What about Sorting?
Dim view As DataView = table.DefaultView
view.Sort = "Name ASC"

'What about filtering?
view.RowFilter = "Name='La Hacienda Ranch'"


Another example is, How do you handle the IDataErrorInfo interface? You have to do a bit of work with OOP, but with ADO.NET... You don't have to do anything, because it's already implemented in a DataTable... Sweet!

What about all of the other concerns about data validation? Create a Strongly-Typed DataSet, add a Customers DataTable to it, Double-Click on it to create the ColumnChanging event, and then validate away!


Overall, it's a pretty good book. And it's definitely worth reading, even if you don't end up using the OOP concepts presented, because there are quite a few things you can learn that will help you as a developer.

In the end, the path to OOP architechture or ADO.NET architecture is up to, but hopefully I've provided you with a few helpful thoughts.


Gary Lima
aka VBRocks
2008 Microsoft Visual Basic MVP
VisualBasicRocks.com

Doing Objects in Visual Basic 2005 (The Addison-Wesley Microsoft Technology Series)

Doing objects in Visual Basic 2005 is a good reference book for starting simple class objects that allow the user to manipulate databases. I would like to see more about class objects that could be used in Web Services that manipulate XML data files. The intricacies of web server permissions and database setup are beyond the expertise of many small businesses.

d weaver

I've long been a big fan of Deborah's writing style and her gift for making complex concepts easy to digest and understand. Many .Net programming books have a chapter that covers a short introduction to OO but Deborah's books are the only series I've seen that thoroughly examine this very important topic. The new book will get you up and going quickly with Visual Basic .Net 2005. The build along activities in the book make it a natural teaching tool. I believe this book should be required reading for any classic Visual Basic programmer moving to .Net and also believe experienced programmers will find the book useful as well since Deborah covers this topic through the full project life-cycle. As the owner of a training company, I plan to build a course around this book in the future. It really is that good!

Mark Dunn, Visual Basic MVP, MS Regional Director, DUNN Training and Consulting, Inc