Book excerpt: “I have never reviewed a book I enjoyed as much as this one. Excellent coverage, perfect for the intended audience. Concise, clear, accurate descriptions. This is a winner.” –Ken Getz, MCW Technologies, LLC Master Visual Basic 2005 by Building a Complete, Production-Quality Application from Start-to-Finish! This book is the fastest, best way for experienced programmers to truly master real-world Visual Basic 2005 development. You won’t just learn syntax and features: you’ll build a complete, robust, data-driven application. You’ll put Visual Basic 2005 to work in solving real business problems, overcoming the practical challenges of building production systems, and you will learn to see Visual Basic 2005 projects as they were intended–as complete, cohesive solutions. Patrick’s engaging style and crystal-clear explanations will help you stay focused, learn fast, and apply what you’ve learned. • Master every stage of the application lifecycle and every step in the development process • Walk through all facets of database design and ADO.NET data access • Create advanced Windows applications with Windows Forms and Web applications with ASP.NET 2.0 • Make the most of classes, inheritance, and other object-oriented Visual Basic 2005 features • Effectively utilize data types, generics, error processing, XML, GDI+, and many other language and platform features • Learn how to personalize and restrict your application’s features based on user preferences • Determine the best way to license, localize, document, deploy, and support your application Start-to-Finish Visual Basic 2005 is the perfect tutorial for existing Visual Basic programmers moving to Visual Basic 2005, programmers moving from other traditional procedural languages, and experienced Visual Basic .NET/2005 programmers who want to deepen their skills in developing entire projects. Tim Patrick is a software architect and developer with nearly 25 years of experience in designing and building custom software solutions. As a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer, he spends his days writing Visual Basic 2005 applications. Tim is the author of The Visual Basic Style Guide and The Visual Basic .NET Style Guide, and co-author of Visual Basic 2005 in a Nutshell and Visual Basic 2005 Cookbook. The companion website (www.awprofessional.com/titles/0321398009) contains the complete software application and source code for the book, plus chapter-specific versions showing each step of the sample project’s construction. The code was written to work with every edition of Visual Studio 2005, Visual Basic 2005, and SQL Server 2005, including Microsoft’s free Express editions.