The Leading Download, Information, Resources and Book Reviews Website for VB.Net and Visual Basic!
Visual Basic .Net Blog
VB.Net and Visual Basic Tutorial, Information and Resources
Beginning VB 2008 Databases From Novice to Professional Beginning from Novice to Professional
Beginning VB 2008 Databases From Novice to Professional Beginning from Novice to Professional
Beginning VB 2008 Databases teaches you everything you need to know about relational databases, SQL, and ADO.NET 2.0, giving you a sound start in developing console and Windows database applications. The book also includes chapters on the new SQL Server XML data type and the forthcoming LINQ enhancements to the next version of Visual Basic.
In addition to teaching you database basics like using SQL to communicate with databases, this book provides you with detailed, code-practical techniques to access data in Visual Basic 2008 across a range of coding situations. Code-heavy and full of practical detail, this book has been fully revised and upgraded for .NET 3.5 and offers you the best contemporary practice in this core programming area, so that you’ll find yourself using it in nearly all your .NET projects.
- Provides step-by-step instructions on how to install and configure necessary tools
- Presents all essential SQL query and update concepts and syntax, so you don’t need prior familiarity with relational databases or SQL
- Describes how to use ADO.NET transactions, exceptions, and events
- Covers ADO.NET features for handling XML, text, and binary data within a Visual Basic 2008 context
- Explains all concepts through straightforward code examples
What you’ll learn
- How relational databases work and how to use them
- How Visual Basic uses ADO.NET to access databases
- How to write stored procedures in T-SQL and call them from Visual Basic programs
- How to use XML in database applications
- How to use LINQ to simplify VB database programming
- How to install SQL Server 2005 Express and use it to teach yourself databases by doing databases
Who is this book for?
Beginning VB 2008 Databases is for every VB programmer. Database programming requires relatively little knowledge of VB but a lot of knowledge about relational database concepts and the database language SQL. This book assumes no prior database experience and teaches you, always through hands-on examples, how to create and use relational databases with SQL and how to access them with VB. Almost every application needs to access a database, and this book teaches all the fundamentals you may ever need to develop professional database applications.
About the Apress Beginning Series
The Beginning series from Apress is the right choice to get the information you need to land that crucial entry-level job. These books will teach you a standard and important technology from the ground up because they are explicitly designed to take you from “novice to professional.” You’ll start your journey by seeing what you need to knowbut without needless theory and filler. You’ll build your skill set by learning how to put together real-world projects step by step. So whether your goal is your next career challenge or a new learning opportunity, the Beginning series from Apress will take you thereit is your trusted guide through unfamiliar territory!
Related Titles
- Pro T-SQL 2005 Programmers Guide
- Foundations of LINQ in C#
User Ratings and Reviews
2 Stars Beginning VB 2008 Databases
Not what I expected. I was looking for a book to help me use the features of VB 2008 to create and use databases. While this book is very authorative, it does very little to ade me in my goal. The examples and descriptions are all based on using Console application forms in VB. While this gives you the technical information for manipulating databases, it does nothing to examine and instruct one in benifiting from the “high level” commands and form controls available in VB 2008. The title should just be Beginning Databases: From Novice to Professional, with very little emphasis on VB 2008!
5 Stars Excellent Book for an Introduction to Databased using VB
This book was more than I expected. The layout of the book makes it very easy to grasp the concepts the author is presenting. He explains a topic and then there is a simple exercise to reinfoce the concept. It is basic and doesn’t go very deeply into the topics, but that’s what I liked. I liked having a few hundred page book instead of a 1000 or 1500 page monster. Eventually you may have to get another book that goes into more detail on the topics listed, but for starting out learning about database/application interaction I thought it was a very good book.
Pro LINQ Language Integrated Query in VB 2008
Pro LINQ Language Integrated Query in VB 2008
About the Apress Pro Series
The Apress Pro series books are practical, professional tutorials to keep you on and moving up the professional ladder.
You have gotten the job, now you need to hone your skills in these tough competitive times. The Apress Pro series expands your skills and expertise in exactly the areas you need. Master the content of a Pro book, and you will always be able to get the job done in a professional development project. Written by experts in their field, Pro series books from Apress give you the hard–won solutions to problems you will face in your professional programming career.
Related Titles
- Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008
- Pro VB 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform
Cost Accounting A Managerial Emphasis
Cost Accounting A Managerial Emphasis
Horngren’s Cost Accounting defined the cost accounting market and continues to innovate today by consistently integrating the most current practice and theory. This acclaimed, number one market-leading book embraces the basic theme of “different costs for different purposes.” It reaches beyond cost accounting procedures to consider concepts, analyses, and management. This latest edition of Cost Accounting incorporates the latest research and most up-to-date thinking into all relevant chapters. Professional issues related to Management Accounting and Management Accountants are emphasized. Chapter topics cover the accountant’s role in the organization to performance measurement, compensation, and multinational considerations. For future accountants who want to enhance their understanding of–and ability to–solve cost accounting problems.
User Ratings and Reviews
1 Star Didn’t enjoy this book
I normally don’t post reviews but I just finished up using this book for a class and highly dislike it. I think the reasoning with how they illustrate problems is confusing and terms are mixed up with bold or plain print. My professor even said he did not like this textbook and wished there was a better choice out there. I thought the homework was good but there were some points that it didn’t make sense at all. My biggest pet peave had to deal with the Economic Ordering Quantity stuff in chapter 20. I read the chapter twice and still didn’t understand the function of EOQ. I eventually found a powerpoint online which explained it. I think this book has potential and obviously the amount of time invested with the supplementary material is amazing. Regardless, I think there still needs to be more work done on this book. Good luck using this book in your class wherever you’re forced to use it.
2 Stars Dense, verbose, boring
The writers of this book present a lot of material; however, they do so in a manner that may cause confusion and a general dislike of the material. Presentation is verbose, often using paragraphs to explain concepts that could be stated in one sentence. While some sidebars present necessary information, many of them are simply advertisements for the publisher’s study guide.
5 Stars COST ACCTG 12TH EDITION
PRODUCT IN EXCELLENT LIKE NEW CONDITION. ARRIVED VERY QUICKLY AND SELLER RESPONDED TIMELY TO MY INQUIRY.
2 Stars Not impressed
I am not sure whether my negative perception of this book arises more from my disliking the book or the subject matter, but I felt like I had trouble learning from it as well as I have from other textbooks. I generally rely on the text to clarify anything I missed from a professor’s lecture, but this one was not that helpful for me. I’m sure this is related to the fact that I am absolutely horrible at accounting, but I was hoping that the textbook could save me and teach me whatever I was missing in class… no such luck!
1 Star Poor Learing Tool for an Online Course
I took this course on line and this is not the textbook to use. I just want to add that I ended up earning an A, I don’t want anyone to think that I am blaming the book for a poor grade. A few of the chapters were very poorly written and the subject matter hard to follow. Some of the problems were so mixed up and time consuming that the time I spent digging out the pertinent information needed to solve the problem, could have been used to learn the material and acquire a better understanding of it as well.
Also the 11th Edition and the 12th edition is the same book, and thus many of the problems were the same except for the referenced dates. It is really a shame that colleges do not do their homework and give the student a break financially ($ 100.00 dollar difference or more.)There is no reason for them to demand the students to purchase a newer version when the older version would have sufficed.
I would strongly recommend to purchase the accompanying STUDENT GUIDE. This was not a requirement, but well worth the money. I will add that it did help me earn that A.
Beginning VB 2008 From Novice to Professional Beginning from Novice to Professional
Beginning VB 2008 From Novice to Professional Beginning from Novice to Professional
This book is for anyone who wants to write good Visual Basic 2008 code – even if you have never programmed before.
Writing good code can be a challenge, there are so many options, especially in a language like Visual Basic. If you want to really get the best from a programming language you need to know which features work best in which situations and understand their strengths and weaknesses. It is this understanding that makes the difference between coding and coding well.
Beginning VB 2008 has been written to teach you how to use the Visual Basic programming language to solve problems. From the earliest chapters, and from the first introductory concepts, you’ll be looking at real-world programming challenges and learning how Visual Basic can be used to overcome them. As you progress through the book the problems become more involved and interesting while the solutions become correspondingly more complex and powerful as Visual Basic features interact to achieve the results that you want.
By the time you’ve finished reading this book and worked through the sample exercises, you’ll be a confident and very competent Visual Basic programmer. You will still have many explorations of the .NET Framework API to look forward to in your future career, but you will have a firm foundation to build from and you will know exactly where to go to find the things that you need to progress confidently in your projects.
Christian Gross is dedicated to helping his readers understand every detail of Beginning VB 2008 and so you can contact him via SKYPE (christianhgross) if you have bought this book and have a question about something Christian discusses. If Christian is available when you contact him, he will even try to answer you right away!
What you’ll learn
- Become skilled in the Visual Basic 2008 programming language.
- Learn everything you need to begin building your own applications in a solid, well–considered way: this book will teach you .NET coding from the ground up.
- Use the Visual Studio IDE to create, debug, and deploy your applications.
- Understand the mysteries of database access and the many ways that it can be accomplished from VB.
- Delve deeply into the huge range of supporting technologies that the .NET Framework offers: LINQ, ASP.NET AJAX, ADO.NET 3.0, WPF, WCF, and Windows Workflow are all introduced and explained in a straightforward and easy-to-follow way.
Who is this book for?
This book is for anyone who’s just starting out to learn about Visual Basic 2008. It doesn’t assume any prior knowledge of object–oriented programming, of the .NET Framework, or of coding in general. It simply assumes that you’re an intelligent person who wants to learn and starts the journey from there.
About the Apress Beginning Series
The Beginning series from Apress is the right choice to get the information you need to land that crucial entry–level job. These books will teach you a standard and important technology from the ground up because they are explicitly designed to take you from “novice to professional.” You’ll start your journey by seeing what you need to know—but without needless theory and filler. You’ll build your skill set by learning how to put together real–world projects step by step. So whether your goal is your next career challenge or a new learning opportunity, the Beginning series from Apress will take you there—it is your trusted guide through unfamiliar territory!
Related Titles
- Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in VB 2008: From Novice to Professional
- Visual Basic 2008 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach
- Pro WPF in VB 2008: Windows Presentation Foundation in .NET 3.5
- Pro VB 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform, Third Edition
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Good Topics, bad description
This book is really only 2 or 3 stars, but I couldn’t find a way to change my rating.
I purchased this book because I liked what the table of contents had to offer. I’m currently working on a Java app and can see that how to accomplish most of the important features of that app in VB.net are covered.
However, now that I’ve been reading thru the book, I question a) the author’s methods of explaining, and in some cases b) his actual explanation.
As the review for the C# version of the book mentions. The author uses analogies extremely literally. This gets very annoying to say the least. It almost like there is an analogy every other page.
I also have a problem with the examples he uses throughout the book. His resume discusses his background in financial apps. He obviously wanted to make use of this as every example I’ve seen so far is based on finance. But this means in some cases, you spend more time trying to understand the purpose of the app, then understanding the point he’s trying to make.
Finally, I’m on chapter 7 now where he discusses Interfaces, Method Overriding, Method Overloading. I find his examples of Interfaces rather poor as they never show the purpose of Interfaces enforcing contracts among various classes. He implements an Interface in a base class, which makes no sense to me, since that interface would probably only get used in 1 place then. He also never discusses Method Overloading as creating the same method names with different signitures. He treats Overloading and Overriding as exactly the same thing.
1 Star Where would I begin!
Beginning VB 2008? Hmm Beginning… Hmm!
I’m going to keep this short and to the point.
You would stand a better chance of learning VB 2008 by reading
Walden by Henry David Thoreau!
Glad I kept my receipt!
1 Star Terrible, deficient book, definitely not for “beginners”
Flipping through this book in the store, it seemed like a good choice because it appeared to try to use coherent projects to teach rather than going the way of most horrible programming books that just isolate topics on one or two pages and never explain how it all works together (”Chapter 44: How to place a radio button. Click the tools tab, then select radio button. Place on form. Chapter 45: How to place a text box…” etc).
The other main reason I bought this book was because it actually has exercises at the end of the chapters, and promises that solutions are available on the publisher’s website. This is another feature most programming books sadly lack. For anyone wanting to learn outside of a classroom, there is usually no way to test or check your own progress.
Well, this book sourly disappointed on both these supposed advantages. While it does try to implement the concepts within whole projects, it does this at the expense of teaching you Visual Basic. The details are sorely lacking. After three chapters, very little has actually been explained. I’ve learned a bit about how to make text appear in a text box by clicking a button, about variable types and a few functions for manipulating numbers and strings. But very little about how to actually make things work together.
Chapter three has you making a “translator” program that will take simple greetings and translate them from one language to another. For example, English “hello” to German “hallo.” The first half of the chapter simply covers how to write a command prompt program to get “hello” to go to “hallo” reliably, while the rest talks a lot about language and culture settings in .NET and how to manipulate them. Where are this author’s priorities? Is that really relevant yet? You would think he’d wait to cover that later and instead teach you how to use a radio button or something. Then, after giving nothing more than bare bones to work with, at the end of the chapter the exercise is to “finish” the translator, adding in the ability to translate both ways and to select different languages to translate to or from. This is all without having given you ANY idea how to implement any controls on a window or form (aside from making “hello world” appear in a text box by clicking a button). Umm… so how are you supposed to do this? To select a language, for example, you would need a control in the window to do that, but so far he has not given even the slightest idea of how that would work.
It seems to me the author was simply extremely lazy and figured you should just read the Microsoft documentation for the petty details. Also, I think he really doesn’t understand the perspective that a novice would have. The things he chooses to explain seem pointless for a beginner to know, while the things he glosses over are more relevant. He is more concerned with getting philosophical about whether it is the user’s responsibility to make sure there are no extra spaces in the word he types, or the programmer’s responsibility to anticipate that there might be extra spaces. Seriously, he spends a whole page on that. What a joke. In addition, the code that he DOES explain is really never explained in full. For example, I’ve typed “Public Shared Function” many times now and don’t recall ever seeing the “public” or “shared” parts explained. Some functions in the book are only “public” and I don’t know the difference. A few words on that kind of thing might help. The author really spends very little time at all trying to explain the basic structure of the language, it’s logic and flow. He just has you typing out lines of code right away, telling you what it does as a whole but rarely explaining the parts.
As far as the exercises and solutions go, well, there are no answers on the website. I downloaded what was available there, and guess what? It’s just the examples from the book typed out for you. There isn’t a shred of anything that can’t already be found in the book. So if you’re baffled about how to complete that translator application, you’re out of luck. I’m used to learning things on my own and usually do very well at it, but a decent book is a necessity. This book is terrible. Avoid.
1 Star Definitely not for novice programers!
I opend the book with the hope that it would lay down a solid foundation for a novice VB programer like me.
Guess what? If you don’t have any previous knowledge on OOP or VB, to say the least, you’re out of luck.
The author might be a seasoned programer himself, but not a good writer from my stand point. The way he extends his ideas and thoughts into black and white is quite ‘un-logic’ to follow.
This book is definitely not for novices. The title of the book should change: Finalizing VB 2008: exclusively not for novices!
4 Stars Beginning VB 2008: From Novice to Professional (Expert’s Voice in .Net)
It’s an ok, but not for an absolute beginner. I would say it’s for the advanced beginner to intermediate. I’ve been learning VB.NET for about a year and this book really helped me grasp the concepts associated with creating classes and structured code.
For the absolute beginner, read Visual Basic 2008 Step by Step before reading this book.
Visual Basic 2008 For Dummies For Dummies Computer Tech
Visual Basic 2008 For Dummies For Dummies Computer Tech
Visual Basic is a favorite programming language, so if you’re new to programming, it’s a great place to start. Visual Basic 2008 For Dummies is the fun and easy way to begin creating applications right away while you get the hang of using the Visual Studio environment. Soon you’ll be building all sorts of useful stuff with VB 2008!
This step-by-step guide walks you through a logical series of tasks that build your skills as you get comfortable with .Net terminology, theory, tools, and design principles. You’ll learn how to build an application in four different architectural styles, and you’ll find out how to make your programs validate input and output, make decisions, and protect themselves from security threats. Discover how to:
- Install the Visual Studio environment
- Write a VB program
- Use Web forms, Windows forms, and Web services
- Establish good programming practices
- Create class libraries
- Write secure applications
- Debug your applications
- Work with strings and “if-then” statements
- Iterate with counted and nested loops
- Pass arguments and get return values
- Access data with VB.NET
- Work with the file system using VB
You’ll also find great tips for working with the VB user interface, using VB.NET in C# programming, troubleshooting your VB programs, taking your programming to the next level, and more! Once you get your hands on Visual Basic 2008 For Dummies, you’ll be programming like a genius in no time!
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Get a jump on programming in Visual-Basic 2008!
This book is designed to get you going quickly in Microsoft Visual Basic 2008. It’s not a reference, it’s probably not for the complete beginner, and true dummies probably won’t be up to this level. Rather it is an entertaining tour for those with some modest programming experience on how to get going quickly in VB 2008. If you are a self-starter, this is the book for you!
The author packs the book full of useful “how to’s.” Rather than trying to answer every question you could possibly ask about VB 2008, the author focuses on the most essential tools you will need. Once you get the basic idea of how a given tool or approach works from the book, you have what you need to apply these tools and/or approaches to other problems you encounter in VB 2008.
1 Star Don’t cripple yourself
Try as hard as I can, I cannot find anything positive to say about this “book”. Don’t be fooled by the table of content, it might sound “juicy” but it’s as illusory as a politicians promises … There ’s no substance in this text, and the whole teaching strategy is flawed. If you begin your programming journey here you will probably conclude programming is not an art, an intellectual challenge, or an intriguing game, but a boring routine to help visual studio write boring useless applications. You might have heard Edsger Dijkstra quote:
“It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.” This might not be necessarily true for VB.NET, but it will if you start your study with this text.
1 Star Spend your money on a real VB book
I am sure there is some worthwhile information between the covers of this book - I just couldn’t find it. I would recommend to people that have the basics already, spend your money on a real VB book.
1 Star Nothing to review
If I received my order (14 May 2008) I would be able to post a review - but as of 4 June 2008 nothing! ETA 19 May 2008.