4020.  Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 Using Visual Basic

Rev. 1.0

 

.NET 3.0 introduced the important new technologies of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). Although there were extensions for Visual Studio 2005, there was not yet full-blown tool support. Visual Studio 2008 brings this tool support along with a further update to the .NET Framework, .NET 3.5. This newest version of the Framework also introduces the important data access technology, Language-Integrated Query (LINQ) along with significant enhancements to the Visual Basic language, largely intended to support LINQ.

 

This three-day hands-on course introduces these new technologies to the experienced developer who has a good working knowledge of .NET and Visual Studio 2005. Numerous programming examples and exercises are provided. The student will receive a complete set of notes and all the programming examples.

 

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

 

·         Become familiar with the Visual Studio 2008 development environment and understand which version is appropriate for specific tasks

·         Gain a working knowledge of implicitly typed variables, lambda expressions, query keywords, and other new features of Visual Basic 2008

·         Use LINQ to access data from collections, databases, and XML

·         Use WPF and Extensible Markup Language (XAML) to create Windows applications

·         Implement workflow applications using WF

·         Implement distributed applications using WCF

 

Course Duration:  3 days. The course could be run on a two-day timeline by omitting a number of the labs.

 

Prerequisites:  The student should have programming experience in Visual Basic and version 2.0 of the .NET Framework and be familiar with the Visual Studio 2005 development environment.

 

1.      Visual Studio 2008

.NET 3.0

.NET 3.5

Visual Studio 2008

New Project Templates

New Designers

Versions of Visual Studio 2008

A Tour of Visual Studio 2008

Windows Presentation Foundation

Multiple-Project Solutions

 

2.      New Features in Visual Basic 2008

Local Type Inference

Object Initializers

Array Initializers

Anonymous Types

Partial Methods

Extension Methods

Lambda Expressions

Query Keywords

 

3.      Language-Integrated Query (LINQ)

LINQ Overview

LINQ to Objects

LINQ to SQL

LINQ to DataSet

LINQ to XML

 

4.      Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)

WCF Overview

Addresses and Bindings

Hosting

Service Contracts

Data Contracts

5.      Windows Workflow Foundation (WF)

WF Overview

Workflow Runtime

Workflow Business Scenario

Sequential Workflows

Activities

Runtime Services

 

6.      Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)

WPF Overview

Extensible Markup Language (XAML)

WPF Controls

Layout

Menus

Dialogs

 

System Requirements

 

Course exercises require Microsoft .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition or higher. The preferred operating system is Windows XP See the appropriate course Setup Guide for details.

 

A good minimal hardware profile for this course consists of a 2 GHz or better CPU, 512 MB of RAM, and at least 4 GB of free disk space for tools installation and courseware.