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Summary: The Definitive Reference on VB Objects and Components
Review: The Visual Basic Object and Component Handbook is the best reference I have ever seen on building and using VB objects and components. Written in a clear, precise style, Peter Vogel takes the reader through the issues behind building "industrial strength" objects and components. Peter leads the reader along through how to use objects up to creating sophisticated object models. The code samples are invaluable, and the explanations are well written and easy to follow. Anyone who has been fortunate enough to hear Peter speak on VB knows his background and knowledge. This same enthusiasim and professionalism comes through quite clearly in this book.I also found the scope of the coverage to be quite broad. Part 3 of the book talks about developing ActiveX controls, ADO, and Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) objects. On the down side, the coverage of Com+ is rather introductory, and not nearly as in-depth as one is lead to believe by the book cover. I highly recommend this book to professional software developers, and anyone with an interest in improving their skill with VB. This is the only reference on Objects and Components that you need! Dave Irvine, Systems Consultant, Irvine Data Systems.
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Summary: This book is AWESOME !
Review: This book is absolutely AWESOME ! Coming from a Strong VB, SQL, ASP, n-tier background... this book is plain english. It explains and clears up so many topics for me (ie ActiveX Exe's, MTS Security, Web techniques) that have just sat in the back of my mind whilst I wondered... "hmm.... I wonder how I would use this and why and when is it most appropriate ?" ! In fact... I do a lot of wandering... and this book is EXCELLENT in clearing up and putting straight so many things that I have always known about, but never been sure how to apply them ! Seriously !!! Don't miss out on this book ! If you do... you're a nut !! At the end of the day.... I'm better off.... as knowledge is power... and this book is serious KNOWLEDGE ! Cheers
Tony
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Summary: You'll actually use this !
Review: This book is well-organized, informative, well-written, and (unlike most books I run across) actually usable! His advice is excellent, his approaches are clean, and he gives it to you in a way in which you can actually put it to use without having to untangle it.
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Summary: Excellent reference and study guide for Visual Basic 6.0
Review: This book takes comprehensive look at Visual Basic Objects and Components including ActiveX EXEs, DLLs, Documents, and MTS/COM+. Every type of object or component is examined in this book and very well explained in a way to make you understand. Peter Vogel's writting style makes reading this book easy. This book was a major study guide for the Designing and Implementing Desktop Applications using Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 (exam 70-176) and the Designing and Implementing Distributed Applications using Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 (exam 70-175). I passed both exams. This was an excellent addendum to the Transcender courses and I use this book several times a week as a reference. There are a lot of Visual Basic 6.0 shops out there and I would highly recommend that this book be part of their reference library. The author is suppose to be writing a Visual Basic.Net Object and Component Handbook which is due out next year. If that book is as good as this book, I will highly recommend it too. I have about 30 Visual Basic books and this book is one of the best.
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Summary: Excellent Reference on Objects
Review: This is probably the best reference yet on doing objects in VB. Vogel gives a clear and concise presentation of objects. I have Lhottas's VB objects 6.0 and Khuratas' Doing Objects in VB but this book summarizes things together that ties everything together clearly! Lhotta's book is good but it's like wading through swamp to get at one concept. Khurata's is good but a little short on examples. One of the problems I was trying to address was the issue of collections containing many objects. For instance a collection of 2000 invoices each in turn contains many line items. As I designed my objects I realized that performance would be impacted as I first loaded the recordset and then package it into the collection and then do some processing and then save the items. It seemed faster to just write directly to the database tables and skip the objects entirely! None of the other books addressed this performance issue directly or presented a solution if it acknowledged it was a problem. His section on large collections not only acknowledged this problem but also presented a solution which was to utilize an object interface around a recordset. The book has already paid for itself ! The examples while simple convey the essential concepts. I've already made this required reading for my development team. This is an excellent, excellent reference source.
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Summary: A Must Read...
Review: Whether you have been developing with VB since 3.0 or you are new to 6.0 - this book is a "must read". There are some good books that focus on the technology of (D)COM, and others that focus on writing code. This book is the most focused effort that I have come across that provides the reader with the practical "implementation" of OOP with VB. Interface / implementation designs and strategies, component design/development and deployment all become clear(er) within the folds of this well written text.
Rating:
Summary: A Must Read...
Review: Whether you have been developing with VB since 3.0 or you are new to 6.0 - this book is a "must read". There are some good books that focus on the technology of (D)COM, and others that focus on writing code. This book is the most focused effort that I have come across that provides the reader with the practical "implementation" of OOP with VB. Interface / implementation designs and strategies, component design/development and deployment all become clear(er) within the folds of this well written text.
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Summary: VB Programmer Blown Away
Review: Wow. Forget about the fact that this isn't put out by a well-known computer-related publishing house like Wrox or O'Reilly. Forget about the fact that it isn't a "Learn in 21 Days" or "Bible" series. Forget about that, as I write this, only a few people have reviewed this book. This book is flat out awesome. Get it. I am a VB programmer with about 1 1/2 years of experience. I started off with a basic VB book, moved on to using VB with databases, and it was at this point I started realizing how important objects were. I needed to separate my client projects from much of the code behind the scenes and put that code in to Active DLL's or EXE's so many different client projects could access it over many different methods (desktop, distributed over our network, or through the Internet). I mean that's the power of VB! I bought "VB COM" by Wrox and while it taught me some things, it was really just an overview. I also bought "VB Beginning Objects" by Smiley but it was too basic and written more like a 700-page novel. They both had decent examples of objects at work, but neither of those books were good references. I guess the best way to describe my situation after reading these two books was that I knew what objects were, I knew the basics of programming them, and yet I still couldn't apply what I learned to the current stuff I was working on at my job. That's when I knew I needed more. Along comes this book and I now feel like I am a full fledged VB object programmer. There's none of this "Here's how you write a Select Case within an object"... the author cuts right to the chase starting at Chapter 1, page 1. Within the first five pages, I already had the author discuss some of the main issues I was concerned and thinking about-- ie, "It seems the more flexible you want to make your object methods, the more parameters you have to pass to them." I was impressed. Already something I was thinking about in my current project. There are 16 chapters covered, beginning chapters on designing, coding the objects, and COM interfaces, advanced chapters on COM Add-In's To ActiveX Objects, Deploying to ActiveX Documents. There's a great chance that if a certain topic involves objects, this book has at least a mention of that topic. This has been the best programming book I've bought in awhile and I will without a doubt explore more books by this publisher and author.
Rating:
Summary: VB Programmer Blown Away
Review: Wow. Forget about the fact that this isn't put out by a well-known computer-related publishing house like Wrox or O'Reilly. Forget about the fact that it isn't a "Learn in 21 Days" or "Bible" series. Forget about that, as I write this, only a few people have reviewed this book. This book is flat out awesome. Get it. I am a VB programmer with about 1 1/2 years of experience. I started off with a basic VB book, moved on to using VB with databases, and it was at this point I started realizing how important objects were. I needed to separate my client projects from much of the code behind the scenes and put that code in to Active DLL's or EXE's so many different client projects could access it over many different methods (desktop, distributed over our network, or through the Internet). I mean that's the power of VB! I bought "VB COM" by Wrox and while it taught me some things, it was really just an overview. I also bought "VB Beginning Objects" by Smiley but it was too basic and written more like a 700-page novel. They both had decent examples of objects at work, but neither of those books were good references. I guess the best way to describe my situation after reading these two books was that I knew what objects were, I knew the basics of programming them, and yet I still couldn't apply what I learned to the current stuff I was working on at my job. That's when I knew I needed more. Along comes this book and I now feel like I am a full fledged VB object programmer. There's none of this "Here's how you write a Select Case within an object"... the author cuts right to the chase starting at Chapter 1, page 1. Within the first five pages, I already had the author discuss some of the main issues I was concerned and thinking about-- ie, "It seems the more flexible you want to make your object methods, the more parameters you have to pass to them." I was impressed. Already something I was thinking about in my current project. There are 16 chapters covered, beginning chapters on designing, coding the objects, and COM interfaces, advanced chapters on COM Add-In's To ActiveX Objects, Deploying to ActiveX Documents. There's a great chance that if a certain topic involves objects, this book has at least a mention of that topic. This has been the best programming book I've bought in awhile and I will without a doubt explore more books by this publisher and author.
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