Description:
Suitable for Visual Basic programmers of all levels, Programming Visual Basic .NET is a solid, one-volume tutorial of basic and advanced features, with good coverage of new support for Web development. Whether you have been working with VB for years or are coming to VB .NET from another language, this book's no-nonsense tour will get you working with VB .NET with a minimum of hassle. This title's compact format has to be one of its most appealing features. After covering the basics of what's new in VB .NET, the author digs in with a fast-moving, authoritative tour of all essential language features in the new version. This language tutorial really shines as it covers topics such as basic language statements, data types, and variables and defining classes using properties, methods, and inheritance (and more advanced bells and whistles). Short code excerpts illustrate just how to program quickly, and many readers will find this material useful as a reference for day-to-day questions about specific language features as they come up in real projects. Of course, .NET has a brand-new set of APIs too. The author concentrates on basic Windows Forms and Web forms programming. The section on basic database ADO.NET (including bound controls) is a standout and will get you started with these essential programming APIs. Coverage of Web services will put using this new approach to building distributed systems within reach of many readers. (Here, the author provides some advice for creating effective distributed Web services.) By focusing first on the language itself, this book will help virtually anyone get started with the latest version of Microsoft's most popular programming language without getting bogged down in the many details of the .NET platform. With plenty of detail for the expert, yet entirely approachable for the beginner, this title will serve both as a reference and a tutorial for getting onboard with this new version. It provides a valuable and timely resource for the aspiring VB .NET developer. --Richard Dragan Topics covered: Introduction to the .NET framework and Visual Basic; in-depth tutorial to VB .NET (including keywords, data types, operators, and expressions, classes, interfaces, exception handling, delegates and events); the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI), the Common Type System (CTS), garbage collection, overview of built-in .NET namespaces; Windows Forms, building MDI applications, basic graphics programming with GDI+, using common controls, menus, event handling, basic Web development with VB .NET (server controls, validation, maintaining state and application-level settings); creating custom controls, Web services (including WSDL and discovery), ADO.NET database programming (SQL Server and OLE DB APIs compared, the DataSet and DataReader classes, grid controls); references to .NET attributes, exceptions, and math functions.
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