Pro VB 2005 and the .NET 2.0 Platform

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Pro VB 2005 and the .NET 2.0 Platform

Visual Basic 2005 is a powerful programming language. Inorder to explore its core features you need good reference material. Pro VB 2005 and the .NET 2.0 Platform byAndrew Troelsen provides comprehensive coverage about the language, starting withthe fundamentals.

The book is divided into seven parts, consisting of 28chapters of high-level technical content. Troelsen kicks off the book with adetailed outline covering the evolution of the .NET Framework and its variousfundamental concepts, such as Assemblies, Common Type System, Common LanguageSpecification, and IL Disassembler. The final chapter in Part 1 explores theinstallation of the .NET Framework 2.0 SDK and building VB 2005 applicationsusing various tools and editors, such as TextPad, SharpDevelop, Visual Basic2005 Express Edition, and Visual Studio 2005. Troelsen also provides briefcoverage of the various elements of the Visual Studio IDE, including areference about some of the other tools available for developing Visual Basic2005 applications.

Part 2 provides detailed coverage about the various VB2005 programming concepts, such as strings, flow control, iteration constructs,sub routines, functions, method overloading, arrays, and enumeration. Part 3examines the core OOP techniques such as encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism,exception handling, garbage collection, and finalization. Part 4 deals with suchadvanced techniques as interfaces, collections, callback interfaces, delegates,events, boxing, unboxing, operator overloading, generics, and nullableDataTypes.

Part 5 examines some of the advanced concepts associatedwith .NET assemblies. The part begins with a basic introduction and then delvesdeep into reflection, late binding, attributes, processes, app domains, contexts,and CLR hosts. Troelsen wraps up this section by providing a comprehensiveexplanation about multithreading and .NET interoperability.

Part 6 begins with a chapter devoted to the System.IOnamespace, with detailed coverage about each class and method associated withthe namespace. The author then explores object serialization, .NET Remotinglayers, development of Windows Forms, and GDI+ Applications. This part endswith nice coverage of the various controls included with theSystem.Windows.Forms namespace and an excellent overview of ADO.NET. The authoralso examines accessing databases with ADO.NET. I would like to have seen Troelseninclude a demo Windows Forms project to illustrate the various concepts associatedwith the manipulation of a database.

The final part of the book examines the development ofASP.NET 2.0 applications and Web services. Troelsen needs to be complimented ashe provides elaborate coverage about the various Web controls, themes, master pages,and state management techniques. The source code for all the chapters can bedownloaded from the publisher s Web site (http://www.apress.com/book/supplementDownload.html?bID=10040&sID=3463).Moreover, you can also download a sample chapter from this site.

From my point of view, chapters in Parts 5 and 6 should berearranged. I felt some of the chapters in Part 6 should be moved to thebeginning of the book; Troelsen should cover advanced topics at the end of thebook. Currently, advanced-level chapters are outlined in the beginning of thebook, which may create confusion among beginners. It would be great if theauthor had provided a sample project using all the features of VB 2005discussed on the book so that developers could get real-world experience,rather than simply going through some console-based applications, as discussedin the book.

Troelsen s writing style is lucid, and each chapterincludes detailed explanations about each concept with complete source code andrelevant comments and screenshots. Troelsen includes a list of importantmethods and properties in each chapter, which is sure to help any reader graspthe content more easily. Each chapter concludes with a short summary.

I would not recommend this book for beginners, as itcontains lots of advanced topics which will confuse a novice programmer. Thebook will be highly useful for Intermediate and Advanced developers as theauthor has explained all the advanced concepts associated with VB 2005programming.

Anand Narayanaswamy

Rating:

Title: Pro VB 2005 and the .NET 2.0 Platform

Author: AndrewTroelsen

Publisher:Apress

ISBN: 1-59059-578-5

Web Site: http://www.apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=10040

Price: US$59.99

Page Count: 1,088