DESKTOP APPLICATIONS WITH MICROSOFT VISUAL BASIC 6.0 MCSD TRAINING KIT

Desktop Applications with Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 MCSD Training Kit

by Microsoft Corporation

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
The Microsoft(r) Certified Solution Developer (MCSD) credential is the premium certification for professionals who design and develop custom business solutions with Microsoft development tools, technologies, and platforms. MCSD candidates must pass three core technology exams-demonstrating their proficiency in solution architecture, desktop applications development, and distributed application development-along with one elective. This Microsoft Press(r) training kit offers comprehensive preparation for exam 70-176, Designing and Implementing Desktop Applications with Microsoft Visual Basic(r) 6.0-one of the core credit exams.

The kit is modular and self-paced, with hands-on exercises that build and measure competency in these critical skill areas: deriving the physical design, establishing the development environment, creating user services, creating and managing COM components, creating data services, testing the solution, deploying an application, and maintaining and supporting applications. The entire course is featured on CD-ROM.

Amazon.com Review
Desktop Applications for Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 MCSD Training Kit provides a review of Visual Basic 6 features for enterprise and Internet development, with an eye toward preparing you for Microsoft's own certification exam. Early sections look at the Microsoft software design process (called the Microsoft Solutions Framework), how to set up Visual SourceSafe for team development, and the advantages of today's multitiered architectures.

Next the kit introduces user interface design (with plenty of hints for creating effective UIs) and how to use control arrays and menu basics. Lab exercises give you practice while creating a working hotel reservation system. Business systems need quality data, and the book covers a variety of strategies for data validation. After some material on debugging and error handling, the authors look at using VB classes to model business objects.

Coverage of COM and ActiveX basics is notably strong in this text, with chapters on ActiveX Documents; object linking and embedding (OLE) Automation (with Excel); and building custom, reusable ActiveX objects. A standout section here is the thorough introduction to the ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) for database access, which includes an introduction to SQL.

The book thoroughly introduces the three options for Internet development in VB (dynamic HTML [DHTML], ActiveX Documents, and WebClasses) and then closes with some material on creating help systems and deploying VB applications. Besides a worthy exam tutorial, this book can also serve as an introduction to the newer features in VB for enterprise and Internet development for those who have used VB in the past but want a quick, comprehensible, and practical tour of its newest capabilities. --Richard Dragan