Serious Visual Basic .Net

This class was designed and is taught by Mark Dunn, a well recognized industry speaker and trainer.  Students attending this course will get a copy of VB .Net Power Coding by Paul Kimmel as course reference material.  Mark has developed labs and slides to support the material covered in the book.  Students will work on a project-based lab throughout the week ultimately completing the full project by the end of the day on Friday.

Monday – The Basics

The .NET Framework Overview

• A Short History of .NET 
• .NET – The Big Picture
• Assemblies, Metadata, and Base Class Libraries
• Common Language Runtime 
• JIT (Just In Time) compilers
• MSIL (Microsoft Intermediate Language)

Visual Studio.NET IDE

• Project Templates, Solution Explorer, and Class View Windows
• Properties Window, Control Toolbox, and Server Explorer
• Debugging Support and Structured Error Handling
• Help System and Internet Resources
• Using Wizards Efficiently

The Visual Basic Language

• Keywords, Syntax, Datatypes, and Arrays
• Control Stuctures (Conditional Structures and Looping)
• Functions and Sub Procedures
• Migrating from Visual Basic 6 to VB .Net
• COM Interoperability

Tuesday – Object-Oriented Programming

Object-Oriented Programming

• Class Fundamentals
• Polymorphism and Interface Inheritance
• Code or Implementation Inheritance
• Reference Types compared to Value Types
• ByRef compared to ByVal
• Working with Collections
• Object Design and OO Architecture
• Overloading, Overriding, and Shadowing
• Casting/Converting Object Datatypes

Wednesday – Windows and Database Development

Programming Windows Forms

• Overview
• Delegates and Control Arrays
• Visual Inheritance
• Binding, Docking, and Anchoring
• Advanced Design (Menus, Tabs, Splitters, Status Bars)

Programming ADO .Net

• Overview
• Connections and Commands
• Connected Operations using the Command and DataReader
• Disconnected Operations using DataAdapters and Datasets
• Using Fabricated Datasets
• Reading and Writing XML
• Concurrency Management
• Using Typed DataSets with Pros and Cons
• ADO.NET XML Features with Schema coverage
• Using DataViews (Sorting, Filtering, Binding)
• Stored Procedures – The Complete Story
• Managing Transactions
• Advanced Business Object Design

Thursday – Web Development

Programming ASP.NET

• Overview
• HTML controls compared to Server-side controls
• Code Behind – Separating HTML and Code
• WebForms (Design with Standard HTML and Server Controls)
• WebForms (Calling Components – DLL’s)
• Managing State (Server and Client Side)
• More on Controls (DataGrid, Calendar, ListBoxes)
• Creating User Controls
• Creating Custom Web Controls
• Making the Most of Your Caching Options
• Security: Authentication and Authorization

Thursday (continued) – Web Development

Web Services

• Overview
• Attack of the Acronyms: UDDI, DISCO, WSDL, and SOAP
• Creating Web Services (It’s Really Easy)
• Consuming Web Services (Both Windows and Web Consumers)
• Turning a Typical DLL into a Web Service
• ADO .Net Techniques for Web Services
• Security Options for Web Services

Friday– Advanced Topics

Advanced Topics

• Building Console Applications
• Creating Windows Services
• Using Performace Counters
• Writing to Event Logs
• Asynchronous Design and Multithreaded Programming
• Deployment, Versioning and Configuration

Lab Work:

Beginning on Monday afternoon, students will start a project and build on it each day.  This project will use the Northwind example database already available with default installs of SQL Server and Access.  Throughout the week, students will design both Web and Windows user interfaces for a distributed application that consumes Web Services exposing a Business Layer connected to a Data Layer which accesses the Northwind database.