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REFERENCES 619Windows Forms
Conventional Windows forms have been revised to incor-
porate the new .NET framework. Visual Basic.NET’s use
of the base class library allows all Windows forms to run
inside the browser, eliminating the need for applets (Evjen
& Beres, 2002).Visual Basic 6.0 and Visual Basic.NET Differences
Many of the changes in Visual Basic.NET revolve around
the underlying .NET framework. Some elements of Visual
Basic 6.0 are not compatible with the .NET framework. A
complete listing of the differences between Visual Basic
6.0 and Visual Basic.NET is well beyond the scope of this
work. Many good references are available on this topic.
The author recommends theVisual Basic.NET Biblelisted
in the References.
The use of the common language Runtime and the base
class library have forced all .NET languages to use com-
mon data types, control structures, function calls, variable
scoping, and variable declarations. Many Visual Basic
6.0 elements exist in the Visual Basic.NET. Others, like
data type definitions, required modification to be consis-
tent with .NET. Some aspects of the original BASIC lan-
guage cannot be supported in .NET. For example, BASIC’s
While...Wend structure and the variant data type are in-
consistent with the base class library and are no longer
supported.CONCLUSION
Visual Basic has been a popular RAD tool for many years.
It provides a programmer-friendly IDE that speeds form
layout and application debugging. Visual Basic’s evolution
from the popular BASIC language has further contributed
to its wide use. Microsoft’s industry prominence has cer-
tainly furthered Visual Basic’s acceptance. With the intro-
duction of .NET Microsoft is positioned to take a leading
role in the Web Services market, and Visual Basic.NET
is its main application development tool. The success of
Visual Basic.NET will depend on the acceptance of the
.NET initiative and Visual Basic.NET’s ability to continue
as a solid Windows application development tool. Some
experts feel that .NET brings nothing new to Web pro-
gramming and, therefore, will not have a major impact
(Petreley, 2002). Others do not see Visual Basic.NET as a
significant improvement and question the practicality of
converting current Visual Basic 6.0 applications (Berger,
2002; Evjen & Beres, 2002). Clearly, the future of the
.NET initiative will drive Visual Basic.NET’s role in Web
Services development. Regardless of Visual Basic.NET’s
success as a Web Services development tool, mainte-
nance of legacy Visual Basic systems alone will keep Vi-
sual Basic as an industry standard for many years to
come.GLOSSARY
Common Language Specification The .NET frame-
work requires that all programs compile to a commonintermediate language. To accomplish this, all lan-
guages must share common data types, control struc-
tures, and modularization schemes.
High-level language A programming language that
compiles a single statement into many machine lan-
guage statements. High-level languages support struc-
tured programming.
Integrated Development Environment A program
that contains a complete set of tools to create, debug,
test, and save a program. All these features are avail-
able within a single environment.
Intranet A private network based on Internet and World
Wide Web technologies.
Variable length records Certain file formats do not re-
quire that corresponding fields in each record con-
tain the same number of characters. Therefore, some
records will contain more characters than others.
Web applications Programs designed to run across the
World Wide Web.
Windows applications Programs designed to run in a
Microsoft Windows operating system.CROSS REFERENCES
SeeVisual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript); Visual C++
(Microsoft).REFERENCES
Aitken, P., & Syme, P. (2002).Visual Basic.NET web pro-
gramming in 21 days.Indiana: Sams Publishing.
Berger, M. (2002). Microsoft cautions against quick
move to .NET.Infoworld. Retrieved April 24, 2002,
from http://staging.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/
02/15/020215hmmigrate.xml
Bradley, J. C., & Millspaugh, A. C. (1998).Programming in
Visual Basic.Massachusetts: Irwin/McGraw-Hill.
Eliason, A., & Malarkey, R. (1998).Visual Basic 5.Indiana:
Que Education & Training.
Evjen, B., & Beres, J. (2002).Visual Basic.NET bible.New
York: Hungry Minds, Inc.
Hare, V. C., Jr. (1982).BASIC programming(2nd ed.), New
York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Harriger, A. R., Lisack, S. K., Gotwals, J. K., & Lutes, K. D.
(1999).Introduction to programming with Visual Basic
6: A problem solving approach.Indiana: Que.
Harrington, J., Spenik, M., Brumbaugh, H., & Diamond,
C. (1997).Visual Basic 5 interactive course.California:
The Waite Group, Inc.
Lahotka, R. (2002). Visual Basic.NET as a fully
object-oriented language. Retrieved April 15, 2002,
from http://softwaredev.earthweb.com/vb/print/
0,12080882111,00.html
McKeown, P. G. (1999).Learning to program with Visual
Basic.New York: J. Wiley.
Petreley, N. (2002). No .NET advantage. Computer-
world.Retrieved from http://www.computerworld.com/
itresources/rcstory/0,4167,STO68723KEY11,00.html
Shelly, G. B., Cashman, T. J., Repede, J. F., & Mick, M. L.
(1999).Microsoft Visual Basic 6: Complete Concepts and
techniques.Massachusetts: Course Technology.