Beginning VB 2008 - From Novice to Professional

Contents at a Glance

Contents

About the Author

About the Technical Reviewer

Introduction

Ready, Steady, Go!

Downloading and Installing the Tools

Choosing the Application Type

Creating Projects and Solutions

Creating the Windows Application

Navigating the User Controls of the Solution

Creating the Console Application

Creating the Class Library

Understanding How the . NET Framework Works

The Important Stuff to Remember

Some Things for You to Do

Learning About .NET Number and Value Types

Focusing and Organizing Your Development

Implementing the Class Library

Understanding Numeric and Value Data Types

Finishing the Calculator

The Important Stuff to Remember

Some Things for You to Do

Learning About String Manipulations

Organizing the Translation Application

Building the Translator Application

Dealing with Languages and Cultures

The Important Stuff to Remember

Some Things for You to Do

Learning About Data Structures, Decisions, and Loops

Understanding the Depth- First Search Algorithm

Implementing User-Defined Types

Organizing the Search Algorithm

Writing the Depth- First Search Code

The Important Stuff to Remember

Some Things for You to Do

Learning About Visual Basic Exception Handling

Understanding Errors, Exceptions, and Exception Handling

Running the Debugger

Handling Exceptions

Writing Exception-Safe Code

The Important Stuff to Remember

Some Things for You to Do

Learning the Basics of Object- Oriented Programming

Understanding Currency Spreads

Organizing the Currency Exchange Application

Writing Tests for the Currency Exchange Application

Writing the Active Trader and Hotel Trader Currency Converters

Learning More About Preprocessor Directives, Properties, and the MustOverride Keyword

The Important Stuff to Remember

Some Things for You to Do

Learning About Components and Class Hierarchies

Understanding Some Basic Tax Concepts

Organizing the Tax Application

Programming Using Ideas

Implementing a Tax Engine

Using the Base Functionality of the Tax Engine to Calculate Taxes

Learning More About Inheritance and Type Casting

The Important Stuff to Remember

Some Things for You to Do

Learning About Component- Oriented Architecture

Understanding Kernels

Organizing the Lighting Application

Building the Kernel

Building a Complete Application

Learning More About Private Classes and Object Initialization

The Important Stuff to Remember

Some Things for You to Do

Learning About Lists, Delegates, and Lambda Expressions

Managing Collections

Adding Numbers and Finding Maximum Values

Using Delegates

Understanding Lambda Expressions

Learning More About Collection Types

The Important Stuff to Remember

Some Things for You to Do

Learning About Persistence

Organizing the Lottery- Prediction System

Piping Data Using a Console

Piping Binary Data

Tweaking Serialization

Completing Custom Types

The Important Stuff to Remember

Some Things for You to Do

Learning About .NET Generics

Why Use . NET Generics?

The Theory of a Server- Side Spreadsheet

Architecting a Server- Side Spreadsheet

Implementing the Server Spreadsheet

Using the Spreadsheet

The Important Stuff to Remember

Some Things for You to Do

Learning About Application Configuration and Dynamic Loading

Convention over Configuration

Setting Up the Dynamic Loading Projects

Defining and Processing a Configuration File

Dynamically Loading an Assembly

Loading a Strongly Named Assembly

Implementing a Shared Typed Convention-Based Architecture

Dynamically Loading Base Class or Interface Types

The Important Stuff to Remember

Some Things for You to Do

Learning About Multithreading

Understanding Multitasking

Using Threads

Implementing a Reader/ Writer Threaded Architecture

Implementing a Producer/ Consumer Architecture

The Important Stuff to Remember

Some Things for You to Do

Learning About Relational Database Data

Understanding Relational Databases

Accessing Relational Databases

Designing a Database Using Visual Basic Express

Accessing the Database Using ADO. NET

Using the Dataset Designer

The Important Stuff to Remember

Some Things for You to Do

Learning About LINQ

Finding the Frequency of Winning Numbers

Learning More LINQ Tricks

Using LINQ in Other Contexts

The Important Stuff to Remember

Some Things for You to Do

Learning About Other Visual Basic Techniques

Operators

The GoTo Statement

. NET Generics Constraints

Nullable Types

Partial Classes and Methods

The Important Stuff to Remember

Some Things for You to Do

Index