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WY006-01 WY006-Sample WY006-Sample-v3.cls January 29, 2004 17:49
Welcome to Visual Basic .NET
be manipulated to make it usable to other language developers. Version 6.0 provided a new way to access
databases with the integration of ActiveX Data Objects (ADO). ADO was developed by Microsoft to aid
Web developers using Active Server Pages to access databases. With all of the improvements to Visual
Basic over the years, it ensured its dominant place in the programming world. It helps developers write
robust and maintainable applications in record time.
With the release of Visual Basic .NET in February 2002, many of the restrictions that used to exist have
been obliterated. In the past, Visual Basic has been criticized and maligned as a “toy” language, as it did
not provide all of the features of more sophisticated languages such as C++ and Java. Now, Microsoft has
removed these restrictions and made Visual Basic .NET a very powerful development tool. This trend
continues with Visual Basic .NET 2003. Although not as drastic a change as from Visual Basic 6 to Visual
Basic .NET, there are enough improvements in the language (including support for the .NET Framework
1.1) that Visual Basic .NET 2003 is a welcome upgrade and is a great choice for programmers of all levels.
Installing Visual Basic .NET
You may own Visual Basic .NET:
❑
As part of Visual Studio .NET, a suite of tools and languages that also includes C# (pronounced
C-sharp) and Visual C++ .NET. Visual Studio comes in three flavors: Professional, Enterprise
Developer, and Enterprise Architect. Each of these versions comes with progressively more tools
for building and managing the development of larger enterprise wide applications.
❑
As the Standard Edition, which includes a cut down set of the tools and languages available with
Visual Studio .NET.
Both enable you to create your own applications for the Windows platform. The installation procedure is
straightforward. In fact, the Visual Basic .NET Install is smart enough to figure out exactly what your
computer requires to make it work.
The descriptions that follow are based on installing Visual Studio .NET Professional. However, all of
Visual Studio .NET’s languages use the same screens and windows (and hence look very similar), so you
would not be seeing much that you would not see anyway.
Try It Out Installing Visual Basic .NET
1.
The Visual Basic .NET CD has an auto-run feature, but if the Setup screen does not appear after
inserting the CD, you have to run setup.exe from the root directory of the CD. To do this, go to
your Windows Start menu (usually found right at the bottom of your screen) and select Run.
Then type d:\setup.exe into the Open box, where d is the drive letter of your CD drive. After the
setup program initializes you will see the screen as shown in Figure 1-1.
2. This dialog box shows the order in which the installation takes place. To function properly, Visual
Basic .NET requires that several components and updates be installed on your machine. Step 1 is
the Windows component update, so click on the Windows Component Update link; you will then
be prompted to insert the Component Update CD that came with your Visual Studio .NET disks.
Depending on how your operating system is configured you may receive the following message like the one
shown in Figure 1-2 before you install the pre-requisites.
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