Programming Microsoft® Visual Basic® .NET (Core Reference) 1st Edition

by Francesco Balena (Author)

84 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-0735613751

ISBN-10: 0735613753

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Programming Microsoft® Visual Basic® .NET Version 2003
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Accelerate your productivity with Visual Basic® .NET—and quickly create powerful Win32® applications and high-performance, scalable applications for the Web—with this indispensable tutorial and reference. Building on the success of the author’s popular programming book for Visual Basic 6.0, this new book teaches you the best practices for porting and reusing existing Visual Basic code in the .NET Framework as well as for exploiting the language’s advanced new object-oriented capabilities. It covers the common language runtime (CLR), multithreaded programs, Windows® Forms applications, GDI+ graphic programming, Windows services, ADO.NET classes for database programs, ASP.NET Web Forms, and Web Services. It includes advanced optimization techniques and tips for leveraging the power of the Microsoft® Visual Studio® .NET environment.

Topics covered include:

Getting started with Visual Basic .NET
Modules, variables, and error handling
Object-oriented features, including inheritance
Delegates and attributes
Arrays, lists, and collections
Files, directories, and streams
Object serialization
Regular expressions
Threading
Assemblies and AppDomains
Reflection
Windows Forms applications and GDI+
Windows Forms custom control creation
Windows services
ADO.NET
XML
ASP.NET Web Forms applications
User controls and custom controls
XML Web services

CD+DVD INSIDE!

CD-ROM features:

A fully searchable electronic copy of PROGRAMMING MICROSOFT VISUAL BASIC 6.0
Sample applications written in Visual Basic .NET

A Note Regarding the CD or DVD

The print version of this book ships with a CD or DVD. For those customers purchasing one of the digital formats in which this book is available, we are pleased to offer the CD/DVD content as a free download via O'Reilly Media's Digital Distribution services. To download this content, please visit O'Reilly's web site, search for the title of this book to find its catalog page, and click on the link below the cover image (Examples, Companion Content, or Practice Files). Note that while we provide as much of the media content as we are able via free download, we are sometimes limited by licensing restrictions. Please direct any questions or concerns to booktech@oreilly.com.

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Useful for VB developers of all levels, Programming Microsoft Visual Basic .NET offers a massive and comprehensive guide to the new VB .NET. While concentrating on "traditional" programming techniques brought up to speed with .NET, this book also covers essential Web development, making it a solid choice for those making the leap from VB 6.

The sheer size of this volume is its obvious distinguishing feature. Weighing in at over 1,600 pages, it's easily one of the largest programming books ever published. The scope of coverage here is wide-ranging and comprehensive. The author first presents a basic language-based tutorial of the new VB .NET, highlighting basic keywords, data types, and new class design features like inheritance, delegates, and events.

Patient, thorough coverage and plenty of short code examples are the guiding principles here. The tour of object-oriented features in VB .NET is among the best that you can find. Coverage of built-in .NET support for strings, math, date/time, and file I/O classes (and the like) will help you master these essential APIs. At many points, the author highlights what's new and different from VB 6. There's plenty of coverage of "traditional" VB applications, including the new Windows Forms, database programming with ADO.NET, and Win32 support including programming the Windows registry, MDI, graphics programming (with GDI+), Windows services, and the like. Later sections look at deploying VB .NET applications in assemblies.

Only in its final sections does this text turn toward ASP.NET and the Internet, with several solid chapters on essential Web Forms and new features like caching, configuration, and basic Web development techniques. By centering on essential VB .NET language features first and then covering a wide spectrum of programming APIs, this book offers a winning choice for anyone with previous VB experience who wants to work effectively with the new VB .NET. With its extremely rich range of topics, all backed up with plenty of code excerpts, this title offers a nearly unbeatable one-volume reference on what's inside the new Visual Basic .NET. --Richard Dragan

About the Author

Francesco Balena is a well-known and highly regarded developer and author. He has written numerous Microsoft Press® books, including the widely acclaimed Programming Microsoft Visual Basic® titles, and edits a popular Web site on .NET programming. Francesco is a cofounder of Code Architects srl, an Italian software company that specializes in using Microsoft technologies to create enterprise-level solutions and programming tools. In addition, he is a regional director for MSDN® Italy, and a frequent speaker at developer conferences.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Microsoft Press; 1st edition (May 20, 2002)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 1616 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0735613753
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0735613751
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.7 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.38 x 2.92 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,557,574 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #200 in Visual Basic Programming (Books)
- #309 in PC Hardware
- #470 in Microsoft .NET

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84 ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

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John Harpur

Essential for professional VB programmers

Reviewed in the United States on November 26, 2002

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This is not a beginner's text by any means, a reasonable degree of proficiency in VB is pretty much indispensable. There is so much of relevance in the book to system programming that it beggars belief. Balena does a very thorough job on presenting class construction, overloading, inheritance and so forth. The presentation is clean and has lots of snippets. In contrast arrays, lists and collections are all covered in one chapter (chapter 9), which I found tight. The hashtable class gets a mere two pages of compact description for instance. This bears out my point that you need to know quite a bit in advance in order to get full measure from this book.
I found the chapter on object serialisation hard going. Serialisation refers to the process of writing objects to a memory buffer. Towards the end of the chapter a good account of XSD files is developed, and it is worth while staying with this chapter until you grasp this format (or formatter).
This is followed by chapters on regular expressions, threading and assemblies. No hostages taken. Chapter 15 covers reflection which I suspect is something few books on .net will tackle as seriously due to its very detailed low level spec. You can use the classes in the reflection namespace to probe other assemblies and 'retrieve' their properties. It is a very focused business.
After this chapter the book returns to the upper world of the regular programmer, and begins to produce topics similar to any other book covering the same development areas but still of very high quality(forms, ADO.NET, ASP,NET, etc.). The weakest chapter here seemed to me to be the GDI+ chapter. It appears a fact of life, but excellent system programmers are not overly enthusiastic graphics programmers. It is a pity that the overall excellence of the book didn't extend to this chapter. Before concluding the review I would point out that I read the first half of the book with much greater diligence than the second half.
If you already know VB, don't pass over this book. It will serve you well.

9 people found this helpful

Helpful

Ian Stirk

The VB.NET book for intermediate-level developers.

Reviewed in the United States on September 5, 2002

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I've just completed reading this book, reading about 5 hours a week for the last 4 months.
This is a great book. It has both a wide scope and substantial depth. It should take the reader's level of awareness/competence of VB.NET from level 3 to 7 (on scale of 1 to 10).
This book is easy to read, it provides many useful code examples to illustrate the concepts being discussed, and additionally Francesco has a welcomed habit of adding excellent tips as side points.
It is primarily a tutorial that can be used as a reference source later.
The book does make several references to VB6. However because of the clever writing/editing, it was not necessary for me to refer to the VB6 CD at any time.
This book should be useful to intermediate-level developers any programming language.
I would like to thank Francesco for what he has done.

8 people found this helpful

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Robert

Superbly written with very useful examples

Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2002

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I finally found a book so good that I may not need any other VB books. As you are reading, you might think, "I wish he'd tell me how to do...", then you turn the page and the example tells you exactly what you wanted to know.
The chapter on Threading is terrific. I had never used threads in VB, now I feel confident that I can.
The section on ADO.net gives you extremely useful information on writing a generic routine that uses the IdbConnection Interface, rather than the individual Connection Classes. This is exactly what I needed to help me in porting some of my VB 6.0 code.
The book is just a masterpiece. You would expect a book this size to cover everything broadly but not deeply, but the book continues to impress me every time I pick it up.

4 people found this helpful

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Dave

What everyone really wants to know about Balena's new book

Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2002

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Well,..this may not be a review,..but I have to comment anyway hoping that maybe this will appear.
Anyone who has read Balena's Programming Microsoft Visual Basic 6 book knows without question how excellent Balena is on the subject. Mine is a bible,..a well-worn bible,..which brings me to my main reason for this "review"....
What we all really want to know is ....will the book FALL APART THIS TIME,.....(you know what I'm talking about if you have the "other" book). Please say yes and I'll buy a copy now!!
(no disrespect to the author intended,...but the publisher of the "other" book should have been sued...I can't say enough about how pathethic the binding was,..I tried glue sticks,..epoxy,..rubber cement,..I have pages all over my office,..and glue too. Great author,..STINKO binding.

5 people found this helpful

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David M. White

Great book, with tons of valuable technical info. A+/5 Stars

Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2010

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I'm a fairly new programmer and this is only my second book on computer programming and it is a great find for me. Keep in mind that it is large (1,400+ pages) and this is not the book for someone who's never progammed before or has very little programming experience or computer knowledge. I've only read one programming book before this one but I wouldn't understand A LOT of the topics in this book if I didn't spend hours reading about computer systems in general because he does get pretty technical in this book. But this book was a godsend for me. For example, I spent 2 hours one night trying to find a simple answer through the Visual Studio MSDN documentation and couldn't find an answer so I gave up that night. Well, within 5 minutes(literally) of receiving this book I had my answer and a program up and running the way that I wanted it to. But this book is a must for any Visual Basic programmer.

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Alexander Banks

Good book that's it

Reviewed in the United States on December 12, 2002

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Good ADO.NET coverage and satisfactory ASP.NET introduction. This book is good, mostly for reference. There are lots of examples but not complete programs, just code fragments. It would had been nice for more real world examples. The Inheritance and AOO chapters are great but Windows Forms and ASP.NET were superficial in my opinion but ok. A lot of Windows Forms components with some examples, but just code fragments. Recommended after you have read some other books.

2 people found this helpful

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G. Luna

Very Good Book, but......

Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2003

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This is one of the best and formal books I could find. However, for an intermediate level VB programmer ii's extremely painful to read and follow. It's working for me but after spending many tears and time.
The author focuses on old VB 6 users. I wish he wasn't forget the new comers like me.

4 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

Ian

Great

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 27, 2016

Verified Purchase

Great reference book for my new job developing VB.NET software.

Erich Quade

Great book

Reviewed in Canada on August 16, 2019

Verified Purchase

Very pleased. The book is old but for references it is great.

ひにもの

手元に置いておきたい本

Reviewed in Japan on August 17, 2008

Verified Purchase

主にC#を使用していますが、.Netのシリアライズ機能について
詳しく書いている本を探してこの本を発見しました。
元がリファレンスだけあって内容は非常に詳しく、通して読むにも
リファレンスとして参照するにも最適です。

重要なクラスについては、リスト表記でのメソッドやプロパティの
説明、豊富なコードでの使用方法の説明、文章での詳細や注意点の
説明と、非常に中身が濃く充実した内容です。
唯一の不満点は、VB6.0との比較が多く、自分にとってはそのような
議論に全く興味がなかった点のみです。

この書籍は説明は丁寧ですが、内容は深くて高度なものですので、
これからプログラムを始めようと思っている方には全くお薦めできません。
逆に、プロのソフトウェア設計者・開発者ならば必携です。
自分は主にC#を使用しているにもかかわらず、また現在.Net Ver3.5が
リリースされていてなお、この本を手元に置いています。

それにしても、通して読むのにこれほど時間のかかった本は初めてです。

One person found this helpful

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