Visual Basic Blog

A group blog from members of the VB team

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:    (image)   LINQ makes it ...

Slide deck for Interop Toolkit Webcast

Thanks to everyone who was able to make it out for this morning's webcast.  We covered how to use the Interop Toolkit 2.0 to upgrade VB6 applications to VB.NET, how to deploy hybrid applications, and finally we touched on some other great interop resources available on MSDN.  As promised the slide deck's available below, and ...

So what does ComClass actually do?

I came across a really cool article yesterday by James Ashley, which shows some of the cool things you can do with the Interop Forms Toolkit 2.0.   The three VB6 examples cover consuming a WebService (complete with a Dilbert icon showing up in the VB6 toolbox!), implementing multithreading using the BackgroundWorker component, and ...

Just Released – Interop Forms Toolkit 2.0!

Today we launched the Interop Forms Toolkit 2.0, which makes it easier than ever to upgrade VB6 applications to .NET.  This new release builds on version 1.0 by adding support for the following features: In the picture below you can see we've got a VB6 Form hosting a .NET UserControl which contains a MenuStrip and a ToolStrip. ...

Interop Roadmap – UserControls, MDI, and Data

Recently the VB team released the Interop Forms Toolkit, which allows VB6 developers to extend their existing applications using .NET.  The toolkit allows developers to write a regular Windows Form in VB.NET, click “Generate Wrapper Classes”, and then call those forms from VB6.  It also provides mechanisms for firing and handling...

Visual Basic 2005 Power Pack!

I’m excited to announce that the Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 Power Pack has been released and is now available for download on MSDN!  In this release we have two components:  Both components are fully supported, and we’ve included the source code for the Interop Toolkit as well.  For more information check out http...

VB6 Collections: The Missing LINQ

By Jonathan Aneja   Hi, my name’s Jonathan and I’m a Program Manager on the VB team, working mainly on LINQ features.  One of the things I love about LINQ is it’s not just limited to querying over databases and XML – you can query over any collection of Objects.  For example, let’s say I have a collection of ...