Programming Visual Basic .NET: Level 2 Course

This course teaches the fundamentals of Visual Basic programming, Including syntax, event-driven programming, compiling applications with the native code compiler, working with controls, handling run-time errors, manipulating form and control properties, and much more. Further coverage teaches how to manage data with ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), create your own objects, manipulate object collections, add status bars and toolbars, optimize your interfaces and VBA code, and create benchmarks to test your application's speed.

This course covers the subject areas covered in Microsoft Course MS2559.

Completion of course: Fundamentals of Visual Basic .NET - Level 1.

Topics covered on the 3 day Programming Visual Basic .NET: Level 2 course

Classes and Objects

• Understanding Classes and Objects
• Classes
• Objects
• Advantages of Using Classes and Objects
• Separate Interface from Implementation
• Handling Complexity
• Creating Classes in Visual Studio
• Adding a Class Library Project
• Setting a Reference to the Class Library
• Constructing Objects
• A Sub Named New()
• Calling the Constructor
• Overloading a Constructor
• Creating and Using Properties
• Fields and Properties
• Creating and Using Methods
• Creating a Method
• Overloading Methods
• Raising and Handling Events
• Declare and Raise an Event
• Handle an Event
• Creating Classes and Objects

Windows Forms Controls

• Exploring the Tools in Your Toolbox
• The Sample Application
• Tab Control
• ContextMenu
• TrackBar
• NumericUpDown
• DomainUpDown
• Label
• CheckBox
• RadioButton
• LinkLabel
• ListBox
• Adding Controls Dynamically
• Anchoring and Docking
• Anchoring
• The CheckedListBox Control
• Docking
• AutoScroll
• Using the Splitter Control
• Dialog Controls
• OpenFileDialog
• ColorDialog
• FontDialog
• Controlling Tab Order
• Working with Windows Form Controls

Inheritance and Interfaces

• Object-Oriented Programming
• Handling Complexity
• Increasing Maintainability
• Understanding Inheritance
• Base Classes and Derived Classes
• Overriding
• Protected Scope
• Extending the People Namespace
• Modifying a Class to Support Inheritance
• Creating a Derived Class
• Testing the Base and Derived Classes
• Customizing Controls with Inheritance
• Deriving from GroupBox
• Polymorphism
• Inheritance-Based Polymorphism
• Using Interfaces
• Interfaces and Polymorphism
• Creating an Interface
• Implementing Interfaces to Enable Sorting
• Implementing IComparable
• Implementing IComparer
• Testing Sorting
• Creating a Derived Class
• Implementing an Interface

Working with Strings and Dates

• Basic .NET Data Types
• Working with Text: The String Class
• Investigating the String Class
• Creating Strings
• String Properties
• Shared String Methods
• Instance String Methods
• Manipulating Text with the StringBuilder Class
• Working with Dates and Times
• DateTime Constructors
• Shared Members
• Simple Properties
• Conversion Methods
• Calculation Methods
• Shared Methods
• Using the DateTime Type
• Handling Elapsed Times with the TimeSpan Type
• Work with the String Class
• Work with the StringBuilder Class
• Use the TimeSpan Type to Measure Elapsed Time

Exception Handling

• Perspectives on Exception Handling
• Exception Handling in .NET
• The Demonstration Code
• Getting Started with Exception Handling
• No Error Handling
• Adding a Simple Try/Catch Block
• Unhandled Exceptions
• Using an Exception Object
• Catching Specific Exceptions
• Taking Advantage of the Exception Hierarchy
• Raising Errors
• Using the Throw Keyword
• Exception-Handling Options
• Passing Error Information
• Running Code Unconditionally
• The Finally Block
• Add Simple Exception Handling
• Handle Individual Exceptions
• Add Code Running Unconditionally

Debugging Your Applications

• Configuring the Debugging Environment
• Configuring Debugging in Visual Studio .NET
• Setting Breakpoints and Stepping through Code
• Exploring the Debugging Windows
• Setting Up a Watch Expression
• Setting Conditional Breakpoints
• Debugging Multiple Languages
• Writing to the Windows Event Log
• The EventLog Object
• Adding Tracing to Your Application
• Trace Listeners
• Trace Switches
• Creating a Configuration File
• Throwing the Switches and Activating the Listeners
• Stepping Through Code
• Writing to the Event Log

Handling Input/Output Tasks

• Introducing the System.IO Namespace
• Selecting Files
• Handling Path Information
• Working with Directories and Files
• Investigating the Objects
• Calling Methods of the Directory Class
• Working with Methods of the Directory Class
• Display File and Directory Information
• Using Stream-Based Objects to Read and Write File Contents
• Reading and Writing Text Files
• Investigating the Code
• Alternate Solutions
• Writing to Files Using the StreamWriter
• Browse for Files
• Display Selected File Information
• Load File Contents

Investigating .NET Data Structures

• Introduction to Data Structures
• Working with Arrays
• Creating and Filling Arrays
• Retrieving Data from Arrays
• Useful System.Array Members
• Arrays in the .NET Framework
• An Example Using Arrays
• Collection Classes
• The ArrayList Class
• The HashTable Class
• The SortedList Class
• The Stack and Queue Classes
• Creating Strongly Typed Collections
• Add Text Lines to a Stack
• Calculate Word Counts in a SortedList

Accessing Data

• Overview of ADO.NET
• ADO.NET Classes
• The ADO.NET Architecture
• Creating ADO.NET Data Objects
• Connecting to Data
• Setting Up Connection Information
• Using the Connection Object
• Executing Commands
• The DataReader Object
• Using the SQLDataReader
• Working with Data
• Working with Data Using the DataAdapter Object
• Managing Data with the DataSet Object
• Filling a DataTable within a DataSet
• Filling DataSets from SQL Server
• Choosing an ADO.NET Provider
• The SQL Server .NET Data Provider
• The OLE DB .NET Data Provider
• The ODBC Data Provider
• Writing Code for Multiple Providers
• Use the DataReader to Fill a ListBox with Categories
• Use a DataSet to Fill a DataGrid with Products

Interoperability

• Using COM Objects in Visual Basic .NET
• Understanding COM Components
• Managed and Unmanaged Code
• Running Unmanaged Code
• Calling an ActiveX DLL from .NET
• Working with COM+ Applications
• Exporting Data to Excel
• Using Platform Invocation Services
• P/Invoke Caveats
• Creating a Wrapper Class
• Call .NET Assemblies from Visual Basic 6.0
• Using .NET from COM
• Creating COM-Callable Managed Objects
• Using COM Objects in .NET
• Calling the Windows API in .NET