421.  VB.NET Essentials

Rev. 2.1

 

Microsoft .NET is an advance in programming technology that greatly simplifies application development, both for traditional, proprietary applications and for the emerging paradigm of Web-based services. .NET is a complete restructuring of Microsoft’s entire system infrastructure and represents a major learning challenge for programmers developing applications on Microsoft platforms. There is substantial change to the Visual Basic language. The new version of the language, Visual Basic .NET, or just VB.NET, is now a fully object-oriented language with features such as interfaces, inheritance, and polymorphism.

 

This two-day course is designed for the experienced programmer to help you quickly come up to speed on the VB.NET language and to learn the fundamentals of GUI programming using Windows Forms. It is recommended for programmers using .NET 1.1, providing project files for Visual Studio .NET 2003. It also contains a chapter introducing new features of .NET 2.0, such as generic types.

 

The course concisely covers the essentials of Windows programming using Microsoft’s VB.NET programming language. It starts with a brief chapter, “.NET:  What You Need To Know,” which gets you up and running in the .NET environment with a minimum of fuss. The next two chapters cover VB.NET language essentials and object-oriented programming in VB.NET. The next chapter discusses how VB.NET relates to the .NET Framework. The following chapter provides a succinct introduction to creating GUI programs using Windows Forms. The course concludes with an overview of the new VB.NET features provided by .NET 2.0, including example programs to illustrate each important new feature. An appendix explains the fundamentals of working with the Visual Studio .NET development environment.

 

The course is practical, with many example programs and two case studies. The goal is to bring you up to speed quickly in writing VB.NET programs, including GUI applications. The student will receive a comprehensive set of materials, including course notes, and all the programming examples. The book Application Development Using Visual Basic and .NET is recommended as a supplement to the course.

 

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

 

·         Acquire a working knowledge of VB.NET programming

·         Learn about important interactions between VB.NET and the .NET Framework

·         Learn how to implement simple GUI programs using Windows Forms

·         Gain a working knowledge of generic types and other new features in VB.NET 2.0.

 

Course Duration:  2 days

 

Prerequisites: The student should be an experienced application developer or architect. Some background in object-oriented programming would be helpful.

 

1.      .NET: What You Need To Know

.NET Executables and the CLR

A .NET Testbed for VB.NET Programming

Visual Studio .NET

 

2.      VB.NET for the Sophisticated Programmer

First VB.NET Console Application

Namespaces

Data Types

Control Structures

Subroutines and Functions

Conversions

Console I/O

Exception Handling

 

3.      Object-Oriented Programming in VB.NET

Classes

Access Control

Methods and Properties

Shared Data and Methods

Inheritance

Overriding Methods

Polymorphism

 

4.      VB.NET and the .NET Framework

Interfaces

System.Object

Collections

Copy Semantics

Generic .NET Interfaces

Delegates

Random Number Generation

Events

 

5.      Introduction to Windows Forms

First VB.NET Windows Application

Windows Forms

Controls

Windows Events

Menus

Dialogs

 

6.      New Features in VB.NET 2.0

Visual Studio 2005

Partial Classes

Generic Types

Continue Statement

IsNot Operator

Operator Overloading

Properties with Mixed Access Levels

Built-In My Object

Other New Features

 

Appendix A. Using Visual Studio .NET

 

Overview of Visual Studio .NET

Creating a Console Application

Project Configurations

Debugging

 

System Requirements

 

Course exercises require Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 on Windows 2000 or XP. See the appropriate course Setup Guide for details.

 

A good minimal hardware profile for this course would have a Pentium 500-MHz or equivalent CPU, 256 MB of RAM, and at least 3 GB of free disk space for tools installation and courseware.