Author Description

<b>What is this book about?</b> <p>.NET is designed to provide a new environment within which you can develop almost any application to run on Windows (and possibly in the future on other platforms). Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET) is likely to be a very popular development tool for use with this framework. VB.NET is a .NET compliant language and, as such, has (except for legacy reasons) almost identical technical functionality as the new C# language and Managed Extensions for C++. Using VB.NET, you can develop a dynamic Web page, a component of a distributed application, a database access component, or a classic Windows desktop application.</p> <p>In order to incorporate Visual Basic into the .NET Framework, a number of new features have been added to it. In fact, the changes are so extensive that VB.NET should be viewed as a new language rather than simply as Visual Basic 7. However, these changes were necessary to give developers the features that they have been asking for: true object orientated programming, easier deployment, better interoperability, and a cohesive environment in which to develop applications.</p> <p><b>What does this book cover?</b></p> <p>In this book, we cover VB.NET virtually from start to finish: We begin by looking at the .NET Framework, and end by looking at best practices for deploying .NET applications. In between, we 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.</p> <p>This book explains the underlying philosophy and design of the .NET Framework and Common Language Runtime (CLR) and explains the differences between Visual Basic 6 and Visual Basic .NET.</p> <p>You will learn how to</p> <ul> <li>Develop applications and components using Visual Studio .NET</li> <li>Effectively apply inheritance and