Professional VB.NET, Second Edition [Paperback]

Fred Barwell (Author), Richard Case (Author), Bill Forgey (Author), Billy Hollis (Author), Tim McCarthy (Author), Jonathan Pinnock (Author), Richard Blair (Author), Jonathan Crossland (Author), Whitney Hankison (Author), Rockford Lhotka (Author), Jan D. Narkiewicz (Author), Rama Ramachandran (Author), Matthew Reynolds (Author), John Roth (Author), Bill Sheldon (Author), Bill Sempf (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 30, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0764544004 | ISBN-13: 978-0764544002 | Edition: 2

What is this book about?

.NET is designed to provide a new environment within which you can develop almost any application to run on Windows (and possibly in the future on other platforms). Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET) is likely to be a very popular development tool for use with this framework. VB.NET is a .NET compliant language and, as such, has (except for legacy reasons) almost identical technical functionality as the new C# language and Managed Extensions for C++. Using VB.NET, you can develop a dynamic Web page, a component of a distributed application, a database access component, or a classic Windows desktop application.

In order to incorporate Visual Basic into the .NET Framework, a number of new features have been added to it. In fact, the changes are so extensive that VB.NET should be viewed as a new language rather than simply as Visual Basic 7. However, these changes were necessary to give developers the features that they have been asking for: true object orientated programming, easier deployment, better interoperability, and a cohesive environment in which to develop applications.

What does this book cover?

In this book, we cover VB.NET virtually from start to finish: We begin by looking at the .NET Framework, and end by looking at best practices for deploying .NET applications. In between, we look at everything from database access to integration with other technologies such as XML, along with investigating the new features in detail. You will see that VB.NET has emerged as a powerful yet easy to use language that will allow you to target the Internet just as easily as the desktop.

This book explains the underlying philosophy and design of the .NET Framework and Common Language Runtime (CLR) and explains the differences between Visual Basic 6 and Visual Basic .NET.

You will learn how to

• Develop applications and components using Visual Studio .NET
• Effectively apply inheritance and interfaces when designing objects and components
• Organize your code using namespaces
• Handle errors using the Try...Catch...Finally structure
• Access data using ADO.NET and bind controls to the underlying data sources
• Create Windows applications and custom Windows controls
• Interoperate with COM and ActiveX components
• Create transactional and queuing components
• Use .NET Remoting to send serialized objects between clients and servers
• Create Windows Services
• Use VB.NET to access information on the Web
• Create and consume Web Services
• Secure your applications and code using the tools provided in the .NET Framework SDK
• Arrange your applications and libraries in assemblies and deploy them using Visual Studio .NET

Who is this book for?

This book is aimed at experienced Visual Basic developers who want to make the transition to VB.NET.

What do you need to use this book?

Although it is possible to create VB.NET applications using the command lines tools contained in the .NET Framework SDK, you will need Visual Studio .NET (Professional or higher), which includes the .NET Framework SDK, to use this book to the full.

Here are some additional notes on what you may need:

• Some chapters make use of SQL Server 2000. However, you can also run the example code using MSDE (Microsoft Data Engine), which ships with Visual Studio .NET.
• Several chapters make use of Internet Information Services (IIS). IIS ships with Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Professional, and Windows XP, although it is not installed by default.
• Chapter 18 makes use of MSMQ to work with queued transactions. MSMQ ships with Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Professional

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

This book is primarily aimed at experienced Visual Basic developers who are looking for an introduction to Visual Basic .NET and the .NET Framework. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Back Cover

What you need to know

This book is primarily aimed at experienced Visual Basic® developers who are looking for an introduction to Visual Basic .NET and the .NET Framework.

What you will learn from this book

This book explains the underlying philosophy and design of the .NET Framework and Common Language Runtime, and details the differences between Visual Basic 6 and Visual Basic .NET.

You will learn how to:

• Develop applications and components using Visual Studio® .NET
• Effectively apply inheritance and interfaces when designing objects and components
• Organize your code using namespaces
• Handle errors using the Try...Catch...Finally structure
• Access data using ADO.NET and bind controls to the underlying data sources
• Create Windows applications and custom Windows controls
• Interoperate with COM and ActiveX components
• Create transactional and queuing components
• Use .NET Remoting to exchange serialized objects between clients and servers
• Create Windows Services
• Use Visual Basic .NET to access information on the Web
• Create and consume Web Services
• Secure your applications and code using the tools provided in the .NET Framework SDK
• Arrange your applications and libraries in assemblies and deploy them using Visual Studio .NET

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 1032 pages
• Publisher: Wrox; 2 edition (April 30, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764544004
• ISBN-13: 978-0764544002
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,106,087 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent guide for experienced visual basic programmers, May 7, 2002

By 

Robert T Darbinson (New Orleans, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Professional VB.NET, 2nd Edition (Paperback)

As someone who has spent over five years as a professional Visual Basic programmer I don't want to throw away all my knowledge when I move to VB.NET. Fortunately, this (big) book doesn't bother teaching you programming from scratch (you should definitely look elsewhere if you're a complete beginner) but will help you make sense of not only what's changed in the move from VB6 to VB.NET (a lot!) but also what you can take with you from VB6 (a surprisingly large amount actually). This means that you don't have to spend your time working through stuff like "this is a variable", "this is an if statement". Instead the book gets stuck into what makes the .NET Framework and Common Language Runtime tick - and explains how you can relate all of it to VB6.

The first third of the book serves as a reference to the VB.NET language - syntax, error handling, objects, inheritance, interfaces, and the differences between variables and types. While this means that you don't get to create many exciting applications early on it does mean that you have a thorough grounding in the essentials of the language.

Then the rest of the book takes a look at the most important features of .NET in turn: ADO.NET, XML, Windows Forms, Web Services, Data Binding, Remoting, Networking, Threading, Security, Web Forms, etc. You won't be an expert in any of these areas after you've read the book but you will have a much better idea of what VB.NET is capable of and how to get started using the advanced features of the .NET Framework Class Library.

Although there are a lot of authors that wrote on this book, which can spell trouble in my experience, the editors have managed to maintain a consistent voice throughout and there's surprisingly little overlap between chapters. Well worth the money.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Full of useful information, May 17, 2002

By 

Terence Black (Kettering, Ohio, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Professional VB.NET, 2nd Edition (Paperback)

This is a huge book (just short of a thousand pages) and it's packed full of really useful information. It covers all the important parts of the .NET Framework Class Library - Win Forms, Web Forms, ADO.NET, XML, Web Services and more - as well as the syntax and new features of Visual Basic .NET.

With so much to cover the book has to keep up a decent pace, which means that the authors assume that you've got experience of working with Visual Basic 6. If you're new to programming then you'll want to look elsewhere.

For VB6 programmers this book is great value.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Much better than the 1st edition!, April 19, 2002

By 

Jeff Graul (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Professional VB.NET, 2nd Edition (Paperback)

This 2nd edition works on the final release of .NET and they've played about with the structure a fair bit. Some of the overlap at the beginning is gone and there are 4 new chapters - remoting, data binding, networking, and windows services. An excellent book!