Professional VB.NET 2003, 3rd Edition (Paperback)

by Bill Evjen (Author), Billy Hollis (Author), Rockford Lhotka (Author), Tim McCarthy (Author), Jonathan Pinnock (Author), Rama Ramachandran (Author), Bill Sheldon (Author) "New technologies force change, nowhere more so than in computers and software..." (more)
Key Phrases: subclassed controls, loan slicer, nonvirtual methods, Visual Basic, Public Sub, Public Class (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Aimed at the reader with some previous programming experience who wants to know VB.NET in detail, Professional VB.NET digs in deeply to the latest version of the popular tool, with plenty of coverage of advanced topics. With in-depth advice for using VB.NET as a true object-oriented language, plus coverage of the inner workings of the .NET Framework itself, this book delivers a thorough and wide-ranging tutorial.

The team authorship of this title shows up in a variety of writing styles. Some early sections contain more theoretical material with a tutorial for designing classes with VB.NET, including its full support for inheritance and "classic" object-oriented design concepts like polymorphism. As this text moves forward, it gets more momentum with somewhat less prose and more examples. Standout sections include some fine material on using Windows Forms, plus excellent coverage of properties and visual design options. Coverage of custom controls is very good here and might well justify the price of this book for experts who need to design their own controls. Much of the book zeroes in on standalone application mode, though three solid chapters on Web Forms, custom Web controls, and Web services will get you started with ASP.NET on the Internet. Short code excerpts, rather than whole programs, are the rule here.

With coverage of .NET assemblies and deployment, threading and COM interoperability, experts will find what they need to get legacy COM and ActiveX components to work with .NET, as well as to start deploying .NET applications in the field. This is a title that can be skimmed in stretches to find topics that really solve day-to-day problems, particularly with the thornier areas of object-oriented design in VB (on which it is excellent though somewhat diffuse), plus advanced object-deployment, security, and other low-level details of the new .NET platform. Clearly, the new version of Visual Basic means big changes for all VB developers, but Professional VB.NET can help experienced VB users negotiate this leap successfully and help them get the most out of this new language and platform. --Richard Dragan --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description
What is this book about?

In Professional VB.NET 2003, the authors cover VB.NET virtually from start to finish. The authors begin by looking at the .NET Framework and end by looking at best practices for deploying .NET applications. In between, the authors 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.

What does this book cover?

With this book, you'll be able to do the following:

• Create new namespaces and how to import and alias existing namespaces within projects
• Apply object-oriented concepts in design and development to create effective object-oriented applications
• Become familiar with value and reference types and understand the key differences in how variables are defined in VB.NET
• 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
• Work with data binding and learn to update the underlying data source in Windows applications
• Create transactional and queuing components
• Use .NET Remoting to exchange serialized objects between clients and servers
• Create Windows Services
• Develop multithreaded applications
• 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

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Product Details

• Paperback: 1056 pages
• Publisher: Wrox; 3 Sub edition (June 18, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764559923
• ISBN-13: 978-0764559921
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.8 x 2.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #285,200 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Too many cooks..., January 31, 2002

By	Karl L Houseknecht (Palmyra, VA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Professional VB.NET (Paperback)

...spoil the soup. The combined regurgitation of 17 authors, each with their own programming style and unorthodox naming conventions makes for a very confusing book. The proofing on this book is absolutely miserable. You had better be a professional developer to get past the myriad of errata in the sample code and text.

All in all, the book does provide a decent jumping off point from which to explore the world of VB.Net. Don't expect a definitive manual, though. If you want that, read the online documentation for Visual Studio.Net. In many ways it is far superior and certainly the last word. I did read this book cover to cover and worked through all the examples. Thankfully, I was able to pick out and fix the errors in the code. A less experienced developer may become quickly frustrated with this book.

The examples are often academic and rarely provide any real-world insight into the intricacies of application development. Another frustrating point is the continued use of the phrase "...we'll explain that later in chapter 'XX'...". In some cases this phrase is used several times in one paragraph. It points to a lack of organization and planning as to how the material should have been presented. You should rightly be very suspicious about a book that was written well before the actual release of the .Net SDK. I think it would be safe to say that as a result, none of the authors have written production .Net code. And from the look of some of their examples, God help their clients.

Overall rating: disappointing. Would I buy it? Probably not. I was able to get my hands on one of several copies floating around at one of my client sites. If you have the ability to borrow it, do so and save yourself the $40. Otherwise, just skip it and read the online documentation that comes with the product.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not a very good book by Wrox's old standards, September 3, 2001

By	The Geek "asquare_from_flatland" (NY, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Professional VB.NET (Paperback)

I use to love Wrox books but they are getting sloppier and sloppier and weaker and weaker in the mad rush to be first to market. Don't get me wrong, this book isn't so much bad as just not very good. Topics that I expect to be in a professional level book (like printing) aren't there and often chapters stop just when they could have gotten to the professional level (the chapter on multithreading is a good example of this, no real discussion of deadlock or race conditions). I would actually say as a result of this the level of this book is actually beginner+ and not professional!

I do believe this could have been a great book if it had another 3 months of development behind it, and I would be willing to bet the second edition of this book will be great and Wrox will recapture it's old glory. But, as of now this book is just half baked.

(I also found the order of this book very strange, the core programming chapters on OOP are introduced in the middle?)

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not what I had hoped, September 12, 2001

By	StephenKara (Richmond, VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Professional VB.NET (Paperback)

After reading "VB.NET For Developers" I was looking for something to take me the next step. This wasnt the book. It seamed that all of the authors did not work together to come up with a concise guide. There is a great deal of content on different topics but not meaty enough to merit the title and I felt lots of duplication (Should have expected with so many authors). My recommendation is to pick up either the "VB.NET For Developers" book or the Dan Appleman book. And wait for a true Professional VB.NET book in several months.