Visual Basic .Net Bible

About the Authors Bill Evjen has been programming in Web development since 1996. Though raised in Seattle, Bill is presently an Internet Applications developer in St. Louis, Missouri. His abilities in Microsoft-centric Web technologies have led him to develop a number of large Internet-based applications for Fortune 500 companies and others. Bill's love of the new .NET platform led him to be the Founder and President of the St. Louis .NET User Group (http://www stlnet.org/), and has helped in bringing prominent .NET speakers to the Midwest. Bill graduated from Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington with a Russian Linguistics degree, and when he isn't tinkering on the computer, he enjoys spending his free time in his summer place in Toivakka, Finland. You can reach Bill at evjen@yahoo.com. Jason Beres has been a software developer for 10 years. He is currently a consultant in south Florida and works exclusively with Microsoft technologies. Jason holds the MCT, MCSD, and MCDBA certifications from Microsoft. When he is not teaching, consulting, or writing, he is formatting his hard drive and installing the latest beta products from Microsoft and keeping up with the latest episodes of Star Trek. About the Series Editor Michael Lane Thomas is an active development community and computer industry analyst who currently spends a great deal of time spreading the gospel of Microsoft .NET in his current role as a .NET Technology Evangelist for Microsoft. In working with over a half-dozen publishing companies, Michael has written numerous technical articles and authored/contributed to almost 20 books on numerous technical topics including Visual Basic, Visual C++, and .NET technologies. He is a prolific supporter of the Microsoft certification programs, having earned his MCSD, MCSE+I, MCT, MCP+SB, and MCDBA. In addition to technical writing, Michael can also be heard over the airwaves from time to time, including two previous weekly radio programs on Entercom stations, most often in Kansas City on News Radio 980KMBZ. He can also occasionally be caught on the Internet doing an MSDN Webcast discussing .NET, the Next Generation of Web application technologies. Michael started his journey through the technical ranks back in college at the University of Kansas, where he earned his stripes and a couple of degrees. After a brief stint as a technical and business consultant to Tokyo-based Global Online Japan, he returned to the states to climb the corporate ladder. He has held assorted roles including IT Manager, Field Engineer, Trainer, Independent Consultant, and even a brief stint as Interim CTO of a successful dot com, although he believes his current role as .NET Evangelist for Microsoft is the best of the lot. He can be reached via email at mlthomas@microsoft.com. About the Contributors Jim Chandler is an independent consultant with extensive experience in architecting and developing custom, integrated software solutions for small- to medium-sized businesses in the Midwest. Before focusing his career on the Windows platform, Jim was a Graphics Partner at Digital Equipment Corporation, evangelizing X11 and Motif. Jim is a coauthor of an upcoming ASP book from Hungry Minds and an active member of the St. Louis .NET Users Group. He has delivered presentations on such topics as ASP.NET, XML, and Web Services to the St. Louis developer community. His research interests include everything .NET as well as COM+ and the Total Cost of Ownership initiatives. Outside the daily challenges of developing applications and fulfilling his research interests, Jim shares his spare time with his wife, Rhonda, and their two sons, Sam and Thomas. Jacob Grass is currently a Software Engineer at Abiliti Solutions, Inc., an industry leader in customer care and billing solutions for the Telecommunications Industry. His professional experience includes Quality Assurance, Research Analysis, Application Development, and instruction. Jacob currently specializes in development and instruction with Visual Basic .Net. This is his first publication. Kevin Grossnicklaus works as an Enterprise Application Architect for SSE in St. Louis, Missouri. He is responsible for assisting development teams in designing, architecting, and building enterprise scale, distributed Web applications using the latest in Web development tools and technologies. He spends a lot of time evangelizing Microsoft technologies through presentations and talks and pushing the use of XML throughout the enterprise. What spare time he has, he spends with his wife, Lynda, and his two (soon to be three) little girls. Yancey Jones is a full-time programmer with a small consulting firm in southern Ohio. He recently received his B.S. in Information Engineering Technology from the University of Cincinnati's College of Applied Science, where he graduated summa cum laude. Yancey has also done development work for various companies, including a leading airport consulting firm, a national provider of healthcare insurance, an online real estate agency, and a multimedia development company. When not at work Yancey enjoys spending time with his three daughters, playing EverQuest, and reading science fiction (in that order). Yancey can be reached at ybjones@msn.com. Uday Kranti, NIIT, is an MCSD and MCDBA. He is currently employed with NIIT Ltd. as a consultant and has been with NIIT for the last three years. He has been involved in the development of applications in technologies such as Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0, Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0, Microsoft Visual lnterDev, ASP, MS office automation, JavaScript, VBScript, XML, WML, VC++ (ATL), Flash + generator, Install Shield, C, C++ and COBOL. His responsibilities also include training development executives, managing projects, and instructionally and technically reviewing training material. Rob Teixeira is a Florida-based consultant who has been involved with Windows development for over a decade. He has worked with every version of Visual Basic, including VB for DOS, and is pleased and amazed at how the language has evolved to fit the needs of the programming community. His favorite aspect of the job is teaching, and he has taught many private corporate classes, as well as several semesters at the University of Southern Florida, Tampa. Rob is looking forward to the new era of programming that will be ushered in by .NET. You can reach him at Rob Teixeira@msn.com. NIIT is a global IT solutions company that creates customized multimedia training products and has more than 2,000 training centers worldwide. NIIT has more than 4,000 employees in 37 countries and has strategic partnerships with a number of major corporations including Microsoft and AT&T.