Professional VB.NET 2003

This book is the sequel to "Beginning VB.NET 2003". That book of necessity had to devote time to going over basic syntactical material of VB.NET. By contrast, this book is squarely aimed at object oriented material. It shows how to design a problem so as to have natural object classes. From these, the book moves into implementing these under VB. This of course leads immediately into topics like inheritance and interfaces. And how to make a hierarchy of classes. You get to imagine levels of abstraction, like virtual methods in a class, which act as placeholders for actual methods in derived classes. There is a good discussion of the various ways that polymorphism can arise. Other chapters go into the GUI aspects of the language. Secondary emphasis really. These chapters are straightforward. Nothing conceptually hard here. What is striking about the book is that in the OO chapters, if you remove the code examples, much of the text could apply to C++, Java and C#. What Microsoft has done is promote VB to the level of these languages.

I'd say this is the best Professional VB.NET book so far. I like the the ADO.NET part and VB control part of this book. Better than O'really ASP and VB book.

I always loved while working with VB 6.0. Right from the release of Visual Studio .NET, I was mainly looking to learn more about VB .NET. I have read a lot about the changes about ASP .NET when compared with classic ASP and I was really keeping my ears open to know about the changes that took place in VB .NET when compared to its predecessor. Well, I ended up in reading this book "Professional VB .NET" written by 14 well known authors. Simple StatisticsAuthor(s): Fred Barwell, Richard Blair, Richard Case, Jonathan Crossland, Bill Forgey, Whitney Hankison, Billy S.Hollis, Rockfort Lhotka, Tim McCarthy, Jonathan Pinnock, Matthew Reynolds, John Roth, Bill Sheldon, Scott Short, Jan Narkiewicz, Rama Ramachandran and Bill Sempf.Publisher: Wrox Pages: 943 Chapters: 25 Table of ContentsChapter 1: Why Do We Need Microsoft .NET?Chapter 2: An Overview of New Features In VB.NETChapter 3: A First Look at a VB.NET ProgramChapter 4: Visual Studio.NET Integrated Development EnvironmentChapter 5: The Common Language RuntimeChapter 6: Variables and TypesChapter 7: NamespacesChapter 8: Windows FormsChapter 9: Error HandlingChapter 10: Creating Windows ControlsChapter 11: Object Syntax IntroductionChapter 12: Inheritance and InterfacesChapter 13: Applying Objects and ComponentsChapter 14: AssembliesChapter 15: ThreadingChapter 16: Working with Classic COM and InterfacesChapter 17: Comopnent ServicesChapter 18: Data Access with ADO.NETChapter 19: Using XML in VB.NETChapter 20: Web FormsChapter 21: Creating Web ControlsChapter 22: Web Services in VB .NETChapter 23: Windows ServicesChapter 24: Deployment in .NETChapter 25: Security in the .NET FrameworkAppendix A: Using the Visual Basic Compatibility LibraryWho is this Book for?This book is primarily aimed at experienced Visual Basic developers. Particularly, it is for those who need to make the transition to VB .NET and want more detailed and up-to-date information. An insight into some of the ChaptersThis books starts with an overview of Microsoft .NET and just how much it changes application development. Understanding these concepts is essential to using VB.NET in the most effective manner. In Chapter 2, the book discusses about the major changes in VB.NET when compared to VB 6.0. If you want to compare VB 6.0 and VB .NET you should read this chapter. Chapter 5 (The Common Language RunTime) is awesome. This has some serious discussions about the evolution of .NET. This chapter also talks about, how Garbage Collector works in VB .NET. In a nut shell, this chapter covers all aspects of VB .NET that you should know. Chapter 6 and 7 discusses about datatypes and Namespaces respectively. Namespaces encapsulate the very building blocks of .NET. Chapter 7 has all about Namespaces. Well, upto Chapter 7, the book gives us an over all idea about the new VB .NET. In the coming chapters, it takes us to the real world of VB .NET. Windows Forms is discussed in Chapter 8. It teaches you how you can create forms in VB .NET. The new

This book is in the same league as all the other Wrox Press books - high quality and very informative. Even though VB.NET is still in Beta 2 with the majority of features in place for the final version, this book does very well to explain whats new and how to migrate from VB6 to VB.NET. There are lots of examples in each of the many sections and the authors do an excellent job of explaining how things are different to VB6, what to watch out for and other good bits of advice. One assumption is made, and stated at the start of the book, and that is that you do have a firm grasp of VB6. Without it, you'll quickly get lost in this book and VB.NET in general. But if you have been using VB6 for a while, you'll sail though the 900+ pages and be well versed in VB.NET at the end of it.

I've been a student and practitioner of C# since Nov 2000, but thought that knowing VB.NET would be valuable as well. In my opinion, this book has been effective in giving me the knowledge necessary to "properly" author .NET programs using VB.NET. They take time (in side notes) to inform you how a .NET version of a keyword, syntax or concept differs from its VB6 counterpart. I think they struck the right balance in disseminating information to the experienced developer. I felt the organization of chapter to be progressively advanced, yet written in a manner that allows you to move through the topics and have a good understanding a short amount of time. Ultimately, I think this volume imparts a level of knowledge, that when extended, give VB.NET developers a good degree of competence. Finally, I think the book is equal to many C# books but takes more of a tutorial approach that is enhanced when used with Visual Studio.NET.