Advanced Visual Basic 6: Power Techniques for Everyday Programs (Paperback)

~ Matthew Curland (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Written by a Microsoft insider and well-respected Visual Basic expert, Matthew Curland's Advanced Visual Basic 6: Power Techniques for Everyday Programs is a unique guide to extending the reach of VB into COM and object design. This compendium of tips and strategies for doing more in VB is perfect for intermediate to advanced developers who seek to overcome bottlenecks in performance and functionality in their favorite programming tool.

The underlying message is that VB lets you work more efficiently with Microsoft COM if you implement a few extra routines that look under its hood. The more notable techniques use memory more efficiently (including code that creates large numbers of objects faster). More advanced readers will appreciate the in-depth guide to building COM objects programmatically within VB. (The book shows you how to create lightweight COM objects by using custom routines.) For the real guru, there's even a section on how to use inline assembly language within VB. Later sections turn to a host of techniques for multithreading, doing more with windows, and how to manage and customize COM-type libraries for successful real-world deployment. Armed with these custom routines and an expert's-eye view of VB internals, you'll be able to get more out of VB with faster, more versatile programs. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered:

• Tips and strategies for extending Visual Basic by using COM
• VB pointers and memory management
• Extending VB arrays (accessing underlying SAFEARRAY COM objects and speeding up array performance)
• Accessing the IUnknown COM interface from within VB
• Binding names and COM vtables in VB
• Improving code reuse by using aggregation in VB (overriding functions in child classes and simulating polymorphism)
• Improving object cleanup in VB (circular, weak, and strong references and strategies for improving memory use in class hierarchies)
• Using COM class factory APIs within VB
• Loading DLLs and OCX controls directly
• Lightweight COM objects in VB
• Strategies for creating large numbers of objects efficiently
• Accessing the VB Running Object Table (ROT)
• Calling function pointers in VB
• Simulating inline assembly instructions
• Threads in VB (apartment models, worker and UI threads, and synchronization tips)
• Improving VB performance with strings
• Generating and customizing type libraries
• Binary compatibility of COM objects
• Tips for working with windows in VB (subclassing, custom window creation, and windowless controls)
• VBoost (custom library of advanced VB routines)

Product Description

In Advanced Visual Basic 6, leading Visual Basic expert Matthew Curland demonstrates powerhouse techniques programmers can use to write high-performance, robust, and reusable VB code. Readers learn how to leverage the close relationships between VB, COM, and OLE Automation, extending the envelope of VB's capabilities and building high-quality, object-based systems. Key topics include how to:

* Control VB array variables explicitly to directly access arbitrary memory locations
* Call pointers to standard, cdecl, and class module functions
* Aggregate complete interface implementations into any VB object
* Override functions on any interface, including those implemented automatically by VB
* Turn any user-defined type into a lightweight COM object
* Minimize memory usage in systems with a large number of objects
* Safely create and manage threads in ActiveX EXEs and DLLs
* Interact with messages to customize windowed and windowless UserControl objects.

The Web site accompanying this book contains extensive source code samples to enable all techniques without external DLLs. It also provides integrated type library add-ins for creating and editing referenced libraries, modifying binary compatibility files, and customizing the type libraries that VB generated for ActiveX components. With this compendium of best practices, sophisticated techniques, and valuable utilities, VB programmers will gain a deeper understanding of VB's inner workings and be able to extend its object-oriented capabilities.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 528 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional (July 23, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201707128
• ISBN-13: 978-0201707120
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #575,310 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars For Gurus Only ?, December 21, 2000

By	W. Woodruff "dotScience" (Chiang Mai, Thailand) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A most well-written book with (for this programmer) some structural problems that do not diminish its technical value as an aid to deeper understanding of the "machinery" behind the "user illusion" of Visual Basic.

This book requires a type of deep knowledge about COM and the underlying interface between Visual Basic and the Windows 32 operating system which you will probably not have unless you have been a C/C++ programmer ... or have done extensive work with trying to optimize applications writen in VB using the API interfaces to Windows provided by VB.

It offers very complex solutions to very complex problems. Implementing the solutions requires you to depend upon the author's provided bridging-code ... a package called "VBBoost" ... which, for most mortals, will be a set of "black boxes."

The problem with that is that as soon as Windows and VB change ... and they soon will undergo a most profound transformation when .Net and VB7 arrive ... how will any real-world solution implemented using the author's bridging-code tools be reliably maintainable ? Or even be usable in the radically different architecture ?

Personally, I would not dare use the tools provided by the author ... which he will update and maintain on his web-site as he has time ... for any commercial code. For me there is difficulty with the MS provided controls whose quirks require staying on top of so many Knowledge Base articles, and which often have to be extended through API code to really tap their full functionality.

To use the techniques in this book with confidence I would have to spend more time than I wish to going back and learning the depths of COM and Win32 ... and I'd just about have to do that by studying the C/C++ literature ... which I'd then have to mentally translate back to VB.

This would undoubtedly make me a better programmer through sleep deprivation, but it is not consistent with my use of VB for rapid prototyping and application development at a fairly high level of abstraction.

If you are a VB Guru already ... or are really ready to step out of the "VB Bubble" into the depths of COM and Win32 ... then I think ... as the other reviews attest ... this is THE book for you. The author, imho, has a genius for explaining very complex interactions between the different internal layers of software in Windows.

I do not regret buying this book, and I really enjoyed the author's clear, expository, style. To me he writes as cleanly and enjoyably as Francesco Balena, Karl Peterson, and a very few others about such a deeply technical aspect of VB.

His web site with updates to the software examples and revisions and corrections for the book shows he is committed to helping people use his work.

So, in conclusion, I have to say that while I wish I was at the level where I could understand and use the knowledge presented so well in this book, I am not.

I have mixed feelings about writing this review ... as I do about the book; I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from buying this book which is an important contribution to the "distaff" VB literature (a universe until now mainly populated by Appleman and McKinney).

What I would love to see would be a book by Francesco Balena, my favorite VB author, that would somehow get me to the point where I could grok Curland's book without spending a year in the C/C+/API gulag. But perhaps Francesco has better uses of his time :)

Please do check out this book yourself !

Bill Woodruff, dotScience

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I wish I could give this Ten Stars -- it is well deserved., March 2, 2001

By	Brian S (Ashburn, VA USA) - See all my reviews

I wish I could give this Ten Stars -- it is well deserved.
Let's face it Visual Basic, by design, has many pitfalls, walls and cages -- with Matt Curland's Advanced Visual Basic 6 any developer can be free to design creatively without keeping track of what they can and cannot do.
This book is a must for Software Engineers developing in VB. After reading many books on Visual Basic and growing utterly exhausted by the phrase "beyond the scope of this book" I have finally found a VB book that caters to the Visual Basic Developer who needs to extend VB beyond the basics and bring professional quality level applications/components to the Windows Market.
The techniques offered are not only applicable to 'everyday programs', but also absolutely indispensable for creating VB applications with a fully professional look and feel.
For any Software Engineer who grew up writing Windows applications in C or COM components in ATL and who want to parlay that knowledge in the Visual Basic Environment, this book will take you there and beyond.
The text on the infamous VBized TypeLibrary is the only concise writing I have ever come across that fully defines what Visual Basic does when you add to an existing interface and rebuild as well as what you can do to prevent additional Interface IDs from being created.
For large development teams sharing components, the binary compatibility tools,(...), are worth the price of admission alone. The binary compatibility tools is a must for any large extended VB project, and the post-build pieces give you simple point and click control over your finished product -- including elimination of external typelib dependencies and changing default interfaces.
I cannot say enough just how much this book has been a great addition in the development of new components and applications.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The title/subtitle is accurate!!!!!!, October 6, 2000

By	Morten Maxild (Denmark) - See all my reviews

Matthew Curland is a world class Windows programmer and he really knows about VB6. Skilful people like Mathew Curland mostly write about the Windows platform in terms of C++. But Matthew Curland takes VB to the same level as any other recognized authority in the progr. book market. This guy seem to know secret things about VB runtime that no other available source has ever shared with the many VB users. And he is not just showing of. The book is actually accompanied with some very nice source code that I myself are prepared to use in real life projects. The list of key topics is too long to present but it is exciting, unique and do not exist anywhere else (MSDN, other books). It's a heavy book! Not like other VB books measured in size, but in style. Many chapters present really hard core techniques so be prepared to study the book (read the source code) very carefully. But I feel the return is worth the effort. After reading this book I am converting C++/ATL binaries into VB source code to minimize DLL dependencies. This is stuff I created in C++ because I never imagined VB would stand a chance doing it right. In short its a *GREAT* book and I am not even half finished 'stealing' all Matt's great code.