One of the most significant features of Visual Basic .NET is the full support of object-oriented programming. For years, developers have been asking for it, but you may not be quite sure how it can help to create and maintain scalable .NET applications. VB.NET is a language that facilitates object-oriented programming, but does not guarantee good object-oriented code. That’s where Object-Oriented Programming with Visual Basic .NET comes in. It will show you how to think about similarities in your application logic and how to design and create objects that maximize the benefit and power the .NET Framework enables. The concept of separating the interface from the implementation has been around for years, but with Object-Oriented Programming with Visual Basic .NET you’ll put it all into practice and you’ll never willingly go back to those old ways. With chapters on object fundamentals and class anatomy, you’ll lay a foundation that will prepare you to think and apply code reuse principles. Following that, you’ll be ready to dive deep into code and the dynamic ecology that it interacts with. Inheritance, containment, polymorphism, overloading, and overriding are just the beginning of this adventure. From there, you’ll discover exception handling, reflection, serialization, and I/O. Packed with examples that will guide you through every step, Object-Oriented Programming with Visual Basic .NET is a guide for those with some programming experience. This book is for those who know Visual Basic 6.0 and are ready or have started the process of developing with Visual Basic .NET. It is an essential tool that will build your skills, as you become a master of Visual Basic .NET. It is one thing to know how to write object-oriented code. Knowing the when and the why is what makes good programmers. That’s exactly what you’ll know after reading this book.

The .NET platform gives Visual Basic developers access to an entirely new and comprehensive class library that promises to further simplify and speed VB application development. In VB.NET Core Classes in a Nutshell, VB Programmers will find a concise and thorough reference to the types found in the core namespaces of the .NET Framework Class Library. The heart of this book is a classic Nutshell Quick Reference to all the types found in 22 core .NET namespaces. The entry for each type describes its significance, explains how the type is used in .NET applications and lists its members and their signatures in readable VB.NET syntax. The core namespaces documented in this book include types in the following areas:

• Essential system and programming services found in the System namespace
• Text handling and regular expression pattern searches
• Diagnostics, debugging, and performance monitoring
• Generalized and specialized collection objects
• Reflection
• Extensible Markup Language (XML)
• Input/output and serialization
• Networking
• Threading and timers
• COM interop and globalization

Java developers typically go through four “stages” in mastering Java. In the first stage, they learn the language itself. In the second stage, they study the APIs. In the third stage, they become proficient in the environment. It is in the fourth stage –”the expert stage”– where things really get interesting, and Java Enterprise Best Practices is the tangible compendium of experience that developers need to breeze through this fourth and final stage of Enterprise Java mastery. Crammed with tips and tricks, Java Enterprise Best Practices distills years of solid experience from eleven experts in the J2EE environment into a practical, to-the-point guide to J2EE. Java Enterprise Best Practices gives developers the unvarnished, expert-tested advice that the man pages don’t provide–what areas of the APIs should be used frequently (and which are better avoided); elegant solutions to problems you face that other developers have already discovered; what things you should always do, what things you should consider doing, and what things you should never do–even if the documentation says it’s ok. Until Java Enterprise Best Practices, Java developers in the fourth stage of mastery relied on the advice of a loose-knit community of fellow developers, time-consuming online searches for examples or suggestions for the immediate problem they faced, and tedious trial-and-error. But Java has grown to include a huge number of APIs, classes, and methods. Now it is simply too large for even the most intrepid developer to know it all. The need for a written compendium of J2EE Best Practices has never been greater. Java Enterprise Best Practices focuses on the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) APIs. The J2EE APIs include such alphabet soup acronyms as EJB, JDBC, RMI, XML, and JMX.

Learn how to leverage JDBC, a key Java technology used to access relational data from Java programs, in an Oracle environment. Author Donald Bales begins by teaching you the mysteries of establishing database connections, and how to issue SQL queries and get results back. You’ll move on to advanced topics such as streaming large objects, calling PL/SQL procedures, and working with Oracle9i’s object-oriented features, then finish with a look at transactions, concurrency management, and performance.JDBC is the key Java technology for relational database access. Oracle is arguably the most widely used relational database platform in the world. In this book, Donald Bales brings these two technologies together, and shows you how to leverage the full power of Oracle’s implementation of JDBC.

You begin by learning the all-important mysteries of establishing database connections. This can be one of the most frustrating areas for programmers new to JDBC, and Donald covers it well with detailed information and examples showing how to make database connections from applications, applets, Servlets, and even from Java programs running within the database itself.

PHP Functions Essential Reference is a detailed and practical funtion reference for the PHP programming language. Concise and authoritative, this working programmer’s guide covers the core function groups plus 300 additional commonly used PHP functions, and details 800 more functions on the book’s web site, php-er.com.Written by working developers and PHP community leaders, this book is full of working code that utilizes the rich variety of functions available with PHP. Every function is supported by one or more examples that illustrate the function in action. This definitive guide to PHP is a must-have for any serious PHP programmer.