Programming Visual Basic 2008: Build .NET 3.5 Applications with Microsoft's RAD Tool for Business

781 Pages·2008·9.29 MB·English

by  Tim Patrick

Programming Visual Basic 2008
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Programming
Visual Basic 2008
Tim Patrick
Beijing • Cambridge • Farnham • Köln • Sebastopol • Taipei • Tokyo
Programming Visual Basic 2008
by Tim Patrick
Copyright © 2008 Tim Patrick. All rights reserved.
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[M]
To Maki, my lovely wife

Table of Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
1. Introducing .NET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Before .NET 1
Back to Introducing .NET 2
The .NET Object 3
The Parts of the .NET Framework 7
From Source Code to EXE 16
What About Visual Studio and Visual Basic? 17
Visual Studio 2008 18
Summary 22
Project 23
2. Introducing Visual Basic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
The History of the Visual Basic Revolution 30
Visual Basic from the Inside Out 32
The Basics of Logic and Data 32
Data Types and Variables 35
Intermission 44
Comments 44
Option Statements 45
Basic Operators 47
Using Functions and Subroutines 49
Conditions 50
Loops 54
Creating Your Own Procedures 57
Other Flow Control Features 61
vii
Events and Event Handlers 64
Namespaces 66
The My Namespace 69
Summary 70
Project 70
3. Introducing the Project. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
The Library Project 76
The Needs of the Users 79
The Life of a Project 83
Summary 90
Project 90
4. Designing the Database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Relational Databases 95
SQL Server 2005 98
SQL 100
Using Databases in Visual Basic 107
Documenting the Database 108
Summary 109
Project 109
5. .NET Assemblies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
What Is an Assembly? 126
What’s Inside an Assembly? 128
Assemblies and Applications 131
The My Namespace and Assemblies 132
Directives and Assemblies 134
Summary 136
Project 137
6. Data and Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
The Nature of Computer Data 151
Data in .NET 153
Visual Basic Data Types 158
Literals 159
Constants 160
viii | Table of Contents
Enumerations 161
Variables 162
Variable and Constant Naming Conventions 165
Local Type Inference 166
Operators 167
Static Variables 172
Arrays 172
Nullable Types 175
Common Visual Basic Functions 176
Summary 181
Project 182
7. Windows Forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Inside a Windows Application 187
Windows in .NET 191
Making Forms Useful 210
Summary 212
Project 212
8. Classes and Inheritance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Object-Oriented Programming Concepts 219
OOP in Visual Basic and .NET 224
Related Issues 241
Summary 244
Project 244
9. Functional Programming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Lambda Expressions 253
Object Initializers 259
Error Handling in Visual Basic 260
The Nature of Errors in Visual Basic 260
Unstructured Error Handling 263
Structured Error Handling 265
Unhandled Errors 267
Managing Errors 269
Summary 273
Project 274
Table of Contents | ix