Practical Database Programming with Visual Basic.NET

Ying Bai

• Publisher: Wiley-IEEE Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781118249826
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Programming Languages
• Index: Computer Science

Practical Database Programming with Visual Basic.NET

The most up-to-date Visual Basic.NET programming textbook—covering both fundamentals and advanced-level programming techniques—complete with examples and solutions

Visual Basic.NET (VB.NET) is an object-oriented computer programming language that can be viewed as an evolution of the classic Visual Basic (VB), which is implemented on the.NET Framework. Microsoft currently supplies two major implementations of Visual Basic: Microsoft Visual Studio (which is commercial software) and Microsoft Visual Studio Express (which is free of charge).

Forgoing the large amounts of programming codes found in most database programming books, Practical Database Programming with Visual Basic.NET shows students and professionals both how to develop professional and practical database programs in a Visual Basic.NET environment by using Visual Studio.NET Data Tools and Wizards related to ADO.NET 4.0, and how to apply codes that are auto-generated by solely using Wizards. The fully updated Second Edition:

• Covers both fundamentals and advanced database programming techniques
• Introduces three popular database systems with practical examples including MS Access, SQL Server 2008, and Oracle
• Features more than fifty sample projects with detailed illustrations and explanations to help students understand key techniques and programming technologies
• Includes downloadable programming codes and exercise questions

This book provides undergraduate and graduate students as well as database programmers and software engineers with the necessary tools to handle the database programming issues in the Visual Studio.NET environment.

Chapter 1

Introduction

For years, during my teaching database programming and Visual Basic.NET programming in my college, I found that it was too difficult to find a good textbook for this topic, so I had to combine a few different professional books together as references to teach this course. Most of those books are specially designed for programmers or software engineers, which cover a lot of programming strategies and huge blocks of codes, which is a terrible headache to college students or beginning programmers who are new to the Visual Basic.NET and database programming. I have to prepare my class presentations and figure out all homework and exercises for my students. I dream that one day I could find a good textbook that is suitable for college students or beginning programmers and help them to learn and master database programming with Visual Basic.NET easily and conveniently. Finally, I decided that I needed to do something for this dream myself after waiting for a long time.

Another reason for me to have this idea is the job market. As you know, most industrial and commercial companies in United States belong to database applications businesses, such as manufactures, banks, hospitals, and retails. Majority of them need professional people to develop and build database-related applications, but not database management and design systems. To enable our students to become good candidates for those companies, we need to create a book like this one.

Unlike most database programming books in the current market, which discuss and present database programming techniques with huge blocks of programming codes from the first page to the last page, this book tries to use a new writing style to show readers, especially to college students, how to develop professional and practical database programs in Visual Basic.NET 2010 by using Visual Studio.NET Design Tools and Wizards related to ADO.NET 4.0, and to apply codes that are autogenerated by using Wizards. By using this new style, the headache caused by using those huge blocks of programming codes can be removed; instead, a simple and easy way to create database programs using the Design Tools can be developed to attract students’ learning interest, and furthermore to enable students to build professional and practical database programming in more efficient and interesting ways.

There are so many different database programming books available on the market, but rarely can you find a book like this one, which implemented a novel writing style to attract the students’ learning interests in this topic. To meet the needs of some experienced or advanced students or software engineers, the book contains two programming methods: the interesting and easy-to-learn fundamental database programming method—Visual Studio.NET Design Tools and Wizards, and advanced database programming method—runtime object method. In the second method, all database-related objects are created and applied during or when your project is running by utilizing quite a few blocks of codes.

OUTSTANDING FEATURES ABOUT THIS BOOK

1. A novel writing style is adopted to try to attract students’ or beginning programmers’ interests in learning and developing practical database programs, and to avoid the headache caused by using huge blocks of codes in the traditional database programming books.

2. Updated database programming tools and components are covered in the book, such as .NET Framework 4.0, LINQ, ADO.NET 4.0, and ASP.NET 4.0, to enable readers to easily and quickly learn and master advanced techniques in database programming and develop professional and practical database applications.

3. A real completed sample database CSE_DEPT with three versions, Microsoft Access 2007, SQL Server 2008, and Oracle Database 11g XE, is provided and used for the entire book. Step by step, a detailed illustration and description about how to design and build a practical relational database are provided.

4. Covered both fundamental and advanced database programming techniques to convenience both beginning students and experienced programmers.

5. Various actual data providers are discussed and implemented in the sample projects, such as the SQL Server and Oracle data providers. Instead of using the OleDb to access the SQL Server or Oracle databases, the real SQL Server and Oracle data providers are utilized to connect to the Visual Basic.NET 2010 directly to perform data operations.

6. Provides homework and teaching materials, and these allow instructors to organize and prepare their courses easily and rapidly, and enable students to understand what they learned better by doing something themselves.

7. Good textbook for college students and good reference book for programmers, software engineers, and academic researchers.

WHO THIS BOOK IS FOR

This book is designed for college students and software programmers who want to develop practical and commercial database programming with Visual Basic.NET and relational databases, such as Microsoft Access, SQL Server 2008, and Oracle Database 11g XE. Fundamental knowledge and understanding on Visual Basic.NET and Visual Studio.NET IDE is assumed.

WHAT THIS BOOK COVERS

Nine chapters are included in this book. The contents of each chapter can be summarized as below.

• Chapter 1 provides an introduction and summarization to the whole book.
• Chapter 2 provides a detailed discussion and analysis of the structure and components about relational databases. Some key technologies in developing and designing database are also given and discussed in this part. The procedure and components used to develop a practical relational database with three database versions, such as Microsoft Access 2007, SQL Server 2008, and Oracle Database 11g XE, are analyzed in detail with some real data tables in our sample database CSE_DEPT.
• Chapter 3 provides an introduction to the ADO.NET, which includes the architectures, organizations, and components of the ADO.NET. Detailed discussions and descriptions are provided in this chapter to give readers both fundamental and practical ideas and pictures in how to use components in ADO.NET to develop professional data-driven applications. Two ADO.NET architectures are discussed to enable users to follow the directions to design and build their preferred projects based on the different organizations of the ADO.NET. Four popular Data Provides, such as OleDb, ODBC, SQL Server, and Oracle, are discussed in detail. The basic ideas and implementation examples of DataTable and DataSet are also analyzed and described with some real coding examples.
• Chapter 4 provides a detailed discussion and analysis about the Language Integrated Query (LINQ), which includes LINQ to Objects, LINQ to DataSet, LINQ to SQL, LINQ to Entities, and LINQ to XML. An introduction to the LINQ general programming guide is provided at the first part in this chapter. Some popular interfaces widely used in LINQ, such as IEnumerable, IEnumerable(Of T), IQueryable and IQueryable(Of T), and Standard Query Operators (SQO), including the deferred and nondeferred SQO, are discussed in that part. An introduction to LINQ Query is given in the second section in this chapter. Following this introduction, a detailed discussion and analysis about the LINQ queries that were implemented for different data sources is provided in detail.
• Starting from Chapter 5, the real database programming techniques with Visual Basic.NET, such as data selection queries, are provided and discussed. Two parts are covered in this chapter: Part I contains the detailed descriptions in how to develop professional data-driven applications with the help of the Visual Studio.NET design tools and wizards with some real projects, and this part contains a lot of hiding codes that are created by Visual Basic.NET automatically when using those design tools and wizards. Therefore, the coding for this part is very simple and easy. Part II covers an advanced technique, the runtime object method, in developing and building professional data-driven applications. Detailed discussions and descriptions about how to build professional and practical database applications using this runtime method are provided combined with four real projects.
• Chapter 6 provides detailed discussions and analyses about three popular data insertion methods with three different databases—Microsoft Access 2007, SQL Server 2008, and Oracle:

1. Using TableAdapter’s DBDirect methods TableAdapter.Insert() method.

2. Using the TableAdapter’s Update() method to insert new records that have already been added into the DataTable in the DataSet.

3. Using the Command object’s ExecuteNonQuery() method.
This chapter is also divided into two parts: Methods 1 and 2 are related to Visual Studio.NET design tools and wizards, and therefore are covered in Part I. The third method is related to runtime object and therefore it is covered in Part II. Nine real projects are used to illustrate how to perform the data insertion into three different databases: Microsoft Access 2007, SQL Server 2008, and Oracle Database 11g XE. Some professional and practical data validation methods are also discussed in this chapter to confirm the data insertion.

• Chapter 7 provides discussions and analyses on three popular data updating and deleting methods with seven real project examples:

1. Using TableAdapter DBDirect methods, such as TableAdapter.Update() and TableAdapter.Delete(), to update and delete data directly again the databases.

2. Using TableAdapter.Update() method to update and execute the associated Table­Adapter’s properties, such as UpdateCommand or DeleteCommand, to save changes made for the table in the DataSet to the table in the database.

3. Using the run time object method to develop and execute the Command’s method ExecuteNonQuery() to update or delete data again the database directly.
This chapter is also divided into two parts: Methods 1 and 2 are related to Visual Studio.NET design tools and wizards and therefore are covered in Part I. The third method is related to runtime object and it is covered in Part II. Seven real projects are used to illustrate how to perform the data updating and deleting against three different databases: Microsoft Access, SQL Server 2008, and Oracle Database 11g XE. Some professional and practical data validation methods are also discussed in this chapter to confirm the data updating and deleting actions. The key points in performing the data updating and deleting actions against a relational database, such as the order to execute data updating and deleting between the parent and child tables, are also discussed and analyzed.

• Chapter 8 provides introductions and discussions about the developments and implementations of ASP.NET Web applications in Visual Basic.NET 2010 environment. At the beginning of Chapter 8, a detailed and complete description about the ASP.NET and the .NET Framework is provided, and this part is especially useful and important to students or programmers who do not have any knowledge or background in the Web application developments and implementations. Following the introduction section, a detailed discussion on how to install and configure the environment to develop the ASP.NET Web applications is provided. Some essential tools, such as the Web server, IIS, and FrontPage Server Extension 2000, as well as the installation process of these tools, are introduced and discussed in detail. Starting from Section 8.3, the detailed development and building process of ASP.NET Web applications to access databases are discussed with six real Web application projects. Two popular databases, SQL Server and Oracle, are utilized as the target databases for those develop...

Table of contents

• Cover
• IEEE Press
• Tilte page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Introduction to Databases
• Chapter 3 Introduction to ADO.NET
• Chapter 4 Introduction to Language Integrated Query (LINQ)
• Chapter 5 Data Selection Query with Visual Basic.NET
• Chapter 6 Data Inserting with Visual Basic.NET
• Chapter 7 Data Updating and Deleting with Visual Basic.NET
• Chapter 8 Accessing Data in ASP.NET
• Chapter 9 ASP.NET Web Services
• Index
• About the Author