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“I have never reviewed a book I enjoyed as much as this one. Excellent coverage, perfect for the intended audience. Concise, clear, accurate descriptions. This is a winner.”
–Ken Getz, MCW Technologies, LLC
Master Visual Basic 2005 by Building a Complete, Production-Quality Application from Start-to-Finish!
This book is the fastest, best way for experienced programmers to truly master real-world Visual Basic 2005 development. You won’t just learn syntax and features: you’ll build a complete, robust, data-driven application. You’ll put Visual Basic 2005 to work in solving real business problems, overcoming the practical challenges of building production systems, and you will learn to see Visual Basic 2005 projects as they were intended–as complete, cohesive solutions. Patrick’s engaging style and crystal-clear explanations will help you stay focused, learn fast, and apply what you’ve learned.
• Master every stage of the application lifecycle and every step in the development process
• Walk through all facets of database design and ADO.NET data access
• Create advanced Windows applications with Windows Forms and Web applications with ASP.NET 2.0
• Make the most of classes, inheritance, and other object-oriented Visual Basic 2005 features
• Effectively utilize data types, generics, error processing, XML, GDI+, and many other language and platform features
• Learn how to personalize and restrict your application’s features based on user preferences
• Determine the best way to license, localize, document, deploy, and support your application
Start-to-Finish Visual Basic 2005 is the perfect tutorial for existing Visual Basic programmers moving to Visual Basic 2005, programmers moving from other traditional procedural languages, and experienced Visual Basic .NET/2005 programmers who want to deepen their skills in developing entire projects.
Tim Patrick is a software architect and developer with nearly 25 years of experience in designing and building custom software solutions. As a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer, he spends his days writing Visual Basic 2005 applications. Tim is the author of The Visual Basic Style Guide and The Visual Basic .NET Style Guide, and co-author of Visual Basic 2005 in a Nutshell and Visual Basic 2005 Cookbook.
The companion website (www.awprofessional.com/titles/0321398009) contains the complete software application and source code for the book, plus chapter-specific versions showing each step of the sample project’s construction. The code was written to work with every edition of Visual Studio 2005, Visual Basic 2005, and SQL Server 2005, including Microsoft’s free Express editions.
Download the Source Code from this book.
NOTE: Some readers who downloaded this file prior to January 15, 2007 reported problems opening the project templates for Chapters 19 to 23. If you experience such problems, please download this file once again, and reinstall the Project Templates according to the instructions on page 826. Answer "yes" when prompted to overwrite existing files with the same name.
Implementing Real-Time Language Translation Using .NET Control Adapters
Persisting Your Visual Basic .NET Objects with .NET Serialization
Font Information
Start-to-Finish Visual Basic 2005
by Tim Patrick
The Library Project designed in Start-to-Finished Visual Basic 2005 uses a barcode font supplied by you to print barcode labels. The following is a list of some resources you can use to locate a barcode font.
Free 3 of 9 Barcode Font - Matt Welch has designed a "Code 3 of 9"
(also called "Code 39") font that you can use for your personal use
for free. It is available on many web sites across the Internet. Here is one
link you can use to access this font.
http://www.barcodesinc.com/free-barcode-font/
Fonts for Purchase - Several companies sell commercial barcode fonts for professional
and business use. Almost any TrueType barcode font sold by these companies will
work with the Library Project. Here is one commercial site that offers a large
collection of barcode fonts.
http://www.bizfonts.com/
Searching for Barcodes - Your favorite search engine can locate barcode fonts
for you. The following link performs a barcode font search on Google.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22barcode+font%22
Information on Barcode Fonts - If you want to find out more about barcodes,
barcode fonts, and how they are used, see Wikipedia's article on barcodes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcode
Visit the Author's Web Site.
An Introduction to .NET for Beginners
Download the Sample Chapter from this book.
Preface xv
Acknowledgments xix
About the Author xxi
Chapter 1 Introducing .NET 1
Chapter 2 Introducing Visual Basic 35
Chapter 3 Introducing the Project 91
Chapter 4 Designing the Database 115
Chapter 5 .NET Assemblies 157
Chapter 6 Data and Data Types 187
Chapter 7 Windows Forms 231
Chapter 8 Classes and Inheritance 275
Chapter 9 Error Processing 317
Chapter 10 ADO.NET 339
Chapter 11 Security 369
Chapter 12 Operator Overloading 401
Chapter 13 XML 437
Chapter 14 Application Settings 471
Chapter 15 Files and Directories 499
Chapter 16 Generics 521
Chapter 17 GDI+ 553
Chapter 18 Localization and Globalization 597
Chapter 19 Printing 627
Chapter 20 Reporting 661
Chapter 21 Licensing Your Application 697
Chapter 22 Web Development 735
Chapter 23 Adding Online Help 771
Chapter 24 Deployment 791
Chapter 25 Project Complete 817
Appendix A Installing the Software 825
Appendix B Software License Agreement 829
Index 831