Introducing .NET - Softcover

Apart from browsing the current .NET beta and documentation from Microsoft, it's somewhat difficult to find a way to understand all of the various aspects of .NET. The authors of this book have done the legwork for you and packaged their discoveries in a concise volume that examines numerous APIs and tools that developers will be using in the next year or so.

After a quick overview of .NET, the book looks at the Common Language Runtime (CLR), which allows different languages (like VB and C#) to interoperate on .NET. This focus is ideal for programmers who want to understand the future of programming. The book handily summarizes what the new C# language will offer, explaining in detail how Visual Basic 7 (now Visual Basic.NET) will differ from early versions of the language. In case you haven't seen the beta of the new Microsoft Visual Studio.NET, you get a tour of its features and interface. Other sections delve into the actual .NET classes you'll be using for development. (These APIs can be accessed from any programming language.) Material on the new Windows Forms and Web Forms shows the future of building user interfaces on the Windows platform. Other sections look at the new ASP.NET (for creating dynamic Web pages) and ADO.NET (for database programming).

Another compelling reason to read this book is its discussion of Web services, a potentially winning concept for a new generation of software. Using the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), an XML standard for describing services, .NET programmers can call remote Web services almost as easily as local functions. The authors provide a remarkably simple example (which packages weather information on a custom Web page). Clearly, this is a core technology on .NET, and the book does a good job of explaining its potential.

Introducing .NET provides the blueprint for understanding what's to be included in the new .NET. Despite an understandable amount of "cheerleading" for Microsoft's new platform, this is good nuts-and-bolts information that's timely and just what developers need to understand the future of computing on Windows. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered:

• Overview of the Microsoft .NET platform
• .NET design goals and features
• The Common Language Runtime (CLR) (common types and metadata)
• Tutorial for C# (data types and control flow, class design, and events)
• Visual Basic.NET (new features, summary of language changes, migrating old VB code to version 7)
• Tour of the Visual Studio.NET Beta 1 IDE
• Basic classes in the .NET class framework (including collection classes)
• ASP.NET (ASP vs. ASP.NET comparison, new features, and advantages)
• Web services and the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)
• Sample Web service for weather information
• Windows Forms (including GDI)
• Distributing .NET components (assemblies, business objects, and unmanaged code)
• ADO.NET and database programming
• Survey of Microsoft enterprise server products
• Case study for a Web-enabled parts inventory system in .NET
• Reference for .NET packages
• Using traditional COM components within .NET