Visual Basic Blog
A group blog from members of the VB team
Latest posts
Back home again!
I can't tell you how excited I am to return to the Visual Basic team after almost eight years of absence! I spent much time working in groups around Microsoft including games, office and business solutions. But in each of these areas I focussed primarily on enabling developer scenarios. And now I am back! And what am I here for? Well, to continue to evolve Visual Basic into the best product for our customers. My personal goal is to make Visual Basic even more approachable and usable by anyone! I know this is possible as I myself cut my teeth on BASIC when I was in the single digit ...
Fun with VB !!!
Who says you can't obfuscate VB code? For fun, I tried writing some VB code which was shaped in the letters 'vb' (that's right, the code itself forms the shape of the letters), where the 'v' and the 'b' are formed from the Visual Studio inifinity logo. In case you're having trouble visualizing that, here's a picture. Because I'm forming the letters from the symbol, the v and b have to be visually interpreted of course: OK, so we have the above shape, but how to create the code this way? Well, we do that by using the ':' line separator all over the shop in order to allow us to create statements on the s...
Programming With XML Using Visual Basic 9 (Beth Massi)
We just published an article by Bill Burrows on Programming With XML Using Visual Basic 9. Bill has also created a series of video tutorials that walk you through the details of how to use the new XML features in Visual Basic 9. Bill takes an easy to follow, step-by-step approach to explaining the details in this exciting new technology. He walks us through creating an Excel spreadsheet from an RSS feed of homes for sale using the Windows Live Expo service. Enjoy!-Beth Massi, VS Community
A Walkthrough of WCF Support in Visual Studio 2008
One feature in Visual Studio 2008 I would like to highlight is our support of Windows Communication Foundation. WCF was introduced with .NET Fx3.0 as a next generation communications API. Previously if you wanted apps to talk you needed to make a lot of up-front decisions: o How important is transmission speed?o How will apps talk? Over the internet, intranet, or on the same machine?o Is reliable messaging important?o Is message encryption important? Once you made those decisions and started writing your app you were forced to learn a new protocol {.Net Remoting, ASMX web services, MSMQ, Named Pipes, etc.} and...
Implementing Dynamic Searching Using LINQ
A common requirement in forms-over-data applications is that users be able to search by any combination of fields to construct a dynamic query at run time. For example, the search feature in this application allows the user to find all records that meet criteria defined on multiple columns: LINQ makes it easy to write powerful queries like this over various data sources; for instance, we can use the following query to find all Orders shipped to a given country within a user-specified timeframe: Dim query = From order In db.Orders _  ...
Channel 9 Interview – LINQ to SQL and the O/R Designer in VS 2008 (Beth Massi)
I just posted another great interview on Channel 9 with Young Joo talking about LINQ to SQL and the new O/R Designer in Visual Studio 2008. He demos a typical business client-server scenario and shows how LINQ to SQL classes make it much easier to work with relational data in SQL Server 2005. Young also talks about architectures where he sees using LINQ to SQL having the most benefits.Learn more about the OR Designer and LINQ to SQL by viewing our "How Do I" video LINQ series on the Visual Basic Developer Center.Enjoy!-Beth Massi, VS Community
Endgame (Matt Gertz)
Well, I’m back from vacation, pleasantly tired and yet relaxed at the same time. I’m busy trying to dig out of e-mail, things are going well, Beta2 has been in your hands for several weeks, and I’ve got lots of great ideas to try out on this site.(That’s the theory, anyway. In reality, I’m writing this post while waiting to start my vacation, having some extra time now that I’ve got everything squared away at the office, and plan on posting it when I get back. Hopefully, everything that I said in the first paragraph above is true… J)I haven’t blog...
Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 Power Packs 2.0 now available
In case you didn't see the links go live on the Visual Basic Developer Center the VB Off-Cycle team has shipped the latest edition of the Power Pack controls. You can download them from here.In this update we've added the much anticipated Line and Shape controls. The line and shape controls give you drag and drop ease at design time and great performance at runtime. By simply setting a few properties you can accomplish complex gradient fills. An improvement over the VB6 version of Line and Shape is we've added support for Events. These are fully supported by Microsoft as part of...
Channel 9 Interview – Amanda Silver on LINQ (Beth Massi)
I just posted an interview with Amanda on Channel 9 where she walks us through the new LINQ syntax available in VS 2008 Beta 2. I also posted some How Do I videos on LINQ to help get you started -- look for more of these beginning of next week!In this interview, Amanda Silver, a Lead Program Manager on the Visual Basic Team, demonstrates new LINQ syntax around Joins and Aggregates that is now available in Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2. Amanda is a guru of LINQ in Visual Basic and gives insightful explanations of how to use this new syntax. The interview starts out a little funny because the first 20 seconds o...