Visual Basic Blog

A group blog from members of the VB team

How do I deploy an application and its prerequisites? (Mary Lee)

Let me count the ways: xcopy, ClickOnce, Windows Installer (.msi), Windows Installer XML, Group Policy, Active Directory, Systems Management Service or System Center Configuration Manager, login scripts, CD, USB drive, and many more third-party software options. Despite the many options, one common requirement is that applications typically ...

Free SQL Server 2008 Express How-To-Guide Series

Thanks to the SQL Server Team we just released a free SQL Server 2008 Express How-To-Guide Series on msdev.com. During the next weeks we’ll also integrating parts of the series into the Visual Basic Developer Center, C# Developer Center, the Beginner Developer Learning Center, etc.One video of the series: How do I query data in a ...

Testing Events for Nothing/Null (Doug Rothaus)

While helping some Windows API folks with some sample code this week, I stumbled upon...uh...I mean “carefully researched” an issue that you might find handy.You may be aware that the RaiseEvent statement automatically checks to verify if an event handler exists before raising the event. If the event is Nothing, then there’s ...

Properties vs Fields – Why Does it Matter? (Jonathan Aneja)

The other day I got an email from a developer asking an interesting question about VB10’s Auto-implemented Properties feature. “I am, however, somewhat confused regarding the properties feature you mentioned - i.e. turning 11 lines of get/set/backing variable into one line. Wouldn't this be exactly the same as the existing ...

Implicit Line Continuation (Kathleen McGrath)

In the second part of my interview with Doug Rothaus, he describes the new implicit line continuation feature in Visual Basic 2010. Learn about the most common scenarios that no longer require the underscore character (_) in the topic, Statements in Visual Basic. See the Video: implicit Line Continuation (image)   --Kathleen ...

Misfit Geek Podcast – Episode #2 "Does VB have a Future?" (Lisa Feigenbaum)

The Misfit Geek, Joe Stagner, asked me this provocative question in a recent episode on his new podcast series: "Does VB have a Future?". Tune in to hear more details on my answer, which of course is YES! :) We talk about plans for increasing the VB.NET content across Microsoft, the great innovations that are happening in VB.NET, idea sharing ...

Auto-Implemented Properties (Kathleen McGrath)

In this interview, Doug Rothaus, a programming writer on the Visual Studio User Education team, describes the auto-implemented properties in Visual Basic 2010. He also demonstrates some of the code examples in his Help topic: Auto-Implemented Properties. See the Video: Auto-Implement Properties. (image)   --Kathleen...