Written and tested for the final release of .NET v1.0, this book explains the underlying philosophy and design of the .NET Framework and Common Language Runtime, and details the differences between Visual Basic 6 and Visual Basic .NET.

VB.NET is covered virtually from start to finish: beginning with an overview of the .NET Framework, and ending with best practices for deploying .NET applications. In between, everything from database access to integration with other technologies such as XML is covered. Each of these new features are investigated in detail. You will see that VB.NET has emerged as a powerful yet easy to use language that allows developers to target the Internet just as easily as the desktop.

You will learn how to:

- Develop applications and components using Visual Studio .NET

- Effectively apply inheritance and interfaces when designing objects and components

- Organize your code using namespaces

- Handle errors using the Try...Catch...Finally structure

- Access data using ADO.NET and bind controls to the underlying data sources

- Create Windows applications and custom Windows controls

- Interoperate with COM and ActiveX components

- Create transactional and queuing components

- Use .NET Remoting to exchange serialized objects between clients and servers

- Create Windows Services

- Use Visual Basic .NET to access information on the Web

- Create and consume Web Services

- Secure your applications and code using the tools provided in the .NET Framework SDK

- Arrange your applications and libraries in assemblies and deploy them using Visual Studio .NET