Murach's Visual Basic 2005: Training & Reference

Description

"Your Visual Basic .NET is by far the best book on the market! Had I bought your book first, I would have saved myself lots of dollars and several months' time."

Bob Kaplan, Jr., Louisville, Kentucky

That's what one .NET developer said about the first edition of our introductory VB book. Now, this new edition is even more effective at turning you into a skilled VB 2005 developer...and at saving you time and money in the process.

Of course, it teaches you all the new language features that make VB 2005 such an outstanding development tool, like:

• data sources and new data controls for doing database processing with little or no code
  
• generics to save casting and restrict collections to a specific type
  
• code snippets to save time on repetitive coding
  
• Intellisense filtering so you can more easily find and designate often-used coding elements
  
• ClickOnce deployment once your application is finished
  
• and more!
  

But this book also teaches you all of the Visual Basic features that have carried over from earlier editions of VB and that you'll use every day in business applications. Like:

• validating data
  
• handling numeric, date, and string data
  
• working with arrays and collections
  
• handling exceptions
  
• working with text, binary, and XML files
  

Here's just some of what's yours in this practical book:

Get a FAST start

This book assumes you want to be a professional developer. So it doesn't waste your time with trivial "Hello, World" applications.

Instead, by the end of the first 3 chapters (section 1), you'll have designed, coded, and debugged your first business application using the development tools that are built into Visual Studio. And by the end of section 2, you'll be developing multi-form projects that validate input data, do repetitive processing using arrays and collections, manipulate dates and strings, and much more.

Get 5 full chapters on database processing

Since most business applications require database handling, this book gives you an entire section (5 chapters) on the subject.

This section starts by showing you how to use the new 2005 data sources feature to develop complete database applications with a minimum of data access code. Now frankly, you could stop there. In fact, one of the features of VB 2005 is that it shields you from the ADO.NET details you had to know in earlier .NET releases.

But if you're going to be a top developer, you'll want to know what's going on under the surface. So this book also teaches you how to use ADO.NET to write your own data access code. Then, it shows you how to use ADO.NET with the new object data sources feature to create 3-layer applications that take advantage of data binding. This is powerful stuff that's glossed over in a chapter or two in other books, but you won't want to miss it.

Get realistic business applications to use as models for your own work

We've found that the key to mastering a programming subject like VB is in the sample applications. So this book presents complete, non-trivial applications that illustrate what you need to know on the job.

For example, chapter 17 presents an Order Entry database application that uses object data sources, business classes, database classes, and transactions. You won't find extensive business applications like this in other VB books, even though studying these types of applications is the best way to master VB development.

Get the OOP training that other developers miss out on

Because VB 2005 is an object-oriented language, this book provides 5 chapters that teach you how your applications really work. Here, you'll learn about the OOP concepts and features like inheritance and interfaces that underlie your code. And in contrast to some other VB books, this book presents OOP in a way that makes sense in the context of business applications. In short, you get the kind of background that makes you a savvy, confident developer.

Get practice exercises to solidify your skills

The exercises at the end of each chapter let you apply what you've learned, giving you valuable, hands-on experience. We provide the starting points for these exercises here at our site, so you can get the maximum amount of practice in a minimum of time.

Paired pages make learning a breeze

If you haven't ever used one of our books before, you may want to download a sample chapter before you buy. If you do, you'll discover why programmers are so impressed by our "paired pages" format and why college students ask their instructors for Murach books. Not only does this format make learning easier and faster, but it also makes this the ideal reference book when you're on the job.