Introduction
Microsoft continues to release new versions of development
tools and many publishers and writers have already started to update the
previous books they have authored. "Murach's Visual Basic 2008" is
one such book which looks similar to that of its previous edition. The chapter
titles are almost the same when compared to their VB 2005 book except the
inclusion of LINQ.
Inside the Book
Section 1 provides a brief introduction to Visual Studio,
designing, coding and testing of a Windows Forms application. Section 2 delves
deep into the essential concepts of Visual Basic language, such as data, code
control structures, code procedures, exception, usage of arrays, collections,
dates and strings. The section concludes with a brief discussion on the
creation and usage of classes and the steps involved to debug an application.
The chapters in section 3 examines the core aspects of
database programming with special reference to the usage of data sources, data
sets, bound controls and parameterized queries. The final chapter teaches you
to write your own data access code using ADO.NET which I hope will be helpful
for advanced developers.
The author has covered the concepts of Inheritance,
Interfaces and Generics in section 4 along with the usage of properties, events
and operators using a sample application. From my point of view, this chapter
should be placed after section 1 as a developer should be familiar with these
fundamental concepts initially. The entire book examines the concepts using a
single sample application which I feel will not only help a developer to master
the concepts, but also will be able to learn the development of a Visual Basic
2008 project.
The final section helps you to master files, streams, LINQ, and
usage of XML files in the development in addition to the steps involved in the
deployment of a Visual Basic 2008 project. The author has examined the
different ways to enhance the user interface of an application and also devoted
an entire chapter to discuss LINQ and its usage with the help of detailed
explanation and source codes.
It would have been great if the author had used a new
application to examine the features of Visual Basic 2008 since the current
project has already been covered in the 2005 edition of the book.
Recommendations
I would recommend the author includes multiple choice
questions at the end of each chapter so that computer training centers can use
the book as course material for imparting training for their students. However,
the author has provided exercises at the end of each chapter and I hope it will
be of great benefit to students. I feel that a CD, along with the Express
Edition of Visual Basic 2005 and the relevant code files, would be an
additional bonus for readers. However, you can download the code files for all
the sample applications directly from the website
of the publisher. "Murach's Visual Basic 2005" only analyzes the
development of Windows Forms applications. If you would like to learn ASP.NET 3.5
using Visual Basic 2008 then you should wait until the publisher releases "Murach's
ASP.NET 3.5 Web Programming with VB 2008" in July.
Conclusion
Even though the author has provided lot of content to
discuss each concept in various chapters, I hope it will definitely help those
students who spend 6 to 8 months to learn Visual Basic 2008. Moreover, the book
will be a big asset for experienced developers due to the unique writing style
and layout.
About the Book
