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Visual Basic .NET
Visual Basic .NET provides the easiest, most productive language and tool for
rapidly building Windows and Web applications. Visual Basic .NET comes with enhanced
visual designers, increased application performance, and a powerful integrated development
environment (IDE). It also supports creation of applications for wireless, Internet-enabled
hand-held devices. The following are the features of Visual Basic .NET with .NET Framework
1.0 and Visual Basic .NET 2003 with .NET Framework 1.1. This also answers why should
I use Visual Basic .NET, what can I do with it?
Powerful Windows-based Applications
Visual Basic .NET comes with features such as a powerful new forms designer, an in-place
menu editor, and automatic control anchoring and docking. Visual Basic .NET delivers
new productivity features for building more robust applications easily and quickly.
With an improved integrated development environment (IDE) and a significantly reduced
startup time, Visual Basic .NET offers fast, automatic formatting of code as you type,
improved IntelliSense, an enhanced object browser and XML designer, and much more.
Building Web-based Applications
With Visual Basic .NET we can create Web applications using the shared Web Forms Designer
and the familiar "drag and drop" feature. You can double-click and write code
to respond to events. Visual Basic .NET 2003 comes with an enhanced HTML Editor for
working with complex Web pages. We can also use IntelliSense technology and tag completion,
or choose the WYSIWYG editor for visual authoring of interactive Web applications.
Simplified Deployment
With Visual Basic .NET we can build applications more rapidly and deploy and maintain
them with efficiency. Visual Basic .NET 2003 and .NET Framework 1.1 makes "DLL Hell"
a thing of the past. Side-by-side versioning enables multiple versions of the same
component to live safely on the same machine so that applications can use a specific
version of a component. XCOPY-deployment and Web auto-download of Windows-based applications
combine the simplicity of Web page deployment and maintenance with the power of rich,
responsive Windows-based applications.
Powerful, Flexible, Simplified Data Access
You can tackle any data access scenario easily with ADO.NET and ADO data access. The
flexibility of ADO.NET enables data binding to any database, as well as classes, collections,
and arrays, and provides true XML representation of data. Seamless access to ADO enables
simple data access for connected data binding scenarios. Using ADO.NET, Visual Basic
.NET can gain high-speed access to MS SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, Microsoft Access, and
more.
Improved Coding
You can code faster and more effectively. A multitude of enhancements to the code
editor, including enhanced IntelliSense, smart listing of code for greater readability
and a background compiler for real-time notification of syntax errors transforms into
a rapid application development (RAD) coding machine.
Direct Access to the Platform
Visual Basic developers can have full access to the capabilities available in .NET
Framework 1.1. Developers can easily program system services including the event log,
performance counters and file system. The new Windows Service project template enables
to build real Microsoft Windows NT Services. Programming against Windows Services
and creating new Windows Services is not available in Visual Basic .NET Standard,
it requires Visual Studio 2003 Professional, or higher.
Full Object-Oriented Constructs
You can create reusable, enterprise-class code using full object-oriented constructs.
Language features include full implementation inheritance, encapsulation, and polymorphism.
Structured exception handling provides a global error handler and eliminates spaghetti
code.
XML Web Services
XML Web services enable you to call components running on any platform using open
Internet protocols. Working with XML Web services is easier where enhancements simplify
the discovery and consumption of XML Web services that are located within any firewall.
XML Web services can be built as easily as you would build any class in Visual Basic
6.0. The XML Web service project template builds all underlying Web service infrastructure.
Mobile Applications
Visual Basic .NET 2003 and the .NET Framework 1.1 offer integrated support for developing
mobile Web applications for more than 200 Internet-enabled mobile devices. These new
features give developers a single, mobile Web interface and programming model to support
a broad range of Web devices, including WML 1.1 for WAP—enabled cellular phones, compact
HTML (cHTML) for i-Mode phones, and HTML for Pocket PC, handheld devices, and pagers.
Please note, Pocket PC programming is not available in Visual Basic .NET Standard,
it requires Visual Studio 2003 Professional, or higher.
COM Interoperability
You can maintain your existing code without the need to recode. COM interoperability
enables you to leverage your existing code assets and offers seamless bi-directional
communication between Visual Basic 6.0 and Visual Basic .NET applications.
Reuse Existing Investments
You can reuse all your existing ActiveX Controls. Windows Forms in Visual Basic .NET
2003 provide a robust container for existing ActiveX controls. In addition, full support
for existing ADO code and data binding enable a smooth transition to Visual Basic
.NET 2003.
Upgrade Wizard
You upgrade your code to receive all of the benefits of Visual Basic .NET 2003. The
Visual Basic .NET Upgrade Wizard, available in Visual Basic .NET 2003 Standard Edition,
and higher, upgrades up to 95 percent of existing Visual Basic code and forms to Visual
Basic .NET with new support for Web classes and UserControls.
Source : Microsoft
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