Week 2: At a Glance

Week 2 teaches you how to write applications in .NET. Starting with an introduction to the Visual Basic .NET and C# languages, you'll be given what you need to understand and use both syntaxes in your applications. You'll learn about the namespaces in the framework class library, and how to use them in your applications to take advantage of the services available to you in the .NET Framework. Most applications you write in today's business world are component driven, access data in a database, and use XML. So, during this week, you'll also learn everything you need to get up to speed on building components, accessing data with ADO.NET, and reading and parsing XML and using the built-in tools in Visual Studio .NET to write robust data-driven applications.

Week 2 covers the following:

• Day 8 teaches you the fundamentals of Visual Basic .NET and C#. You'll learn about the data types allowed in .NET, how to use decision structures in your applications, how to use the various looping techniques in both languages, and how to use operators in Visual Basic .NET and C#.

• Day 9 teaches you about namespaces in the framework class library, and how they are the foundation of the .NET Framework. You'll learn how to locate information in the SDK about namespaces, and how to reference namespaces in your C# and Visual Basic .NET applications. To learn how to implement namespaces, you'll get an intense lesson on using and accessing the environment using the System.Enviroment class and how to read and write files and streams using the System.IO namespace in the framework class library.

• Day 10 is your first look at accessing data in .NET. You'll learn about ADO.NET and how it differs from traditional ADO. You'll also learn about the new objects in ADO.NET, such as the DataReader, the DataSet, and the DataAdapter. You'll find out how to use these objects to read and write data from SQL Server, Microsoft Access, and other database servers.

• Day 11 builds on what you learned on Day 10, and teaches you how to use all of .NET's visual tools that aid you in designing and writing data-driven applications. Using tools such as the Server Explorer, you can manage your connections to the database, create tables, views, and stored procedures, and write data forms with little or no code.

• Day 12 teaches you about XML in the .NET Framework. XML is the format of choice for interacting with different systems on intranets and over the Web, and understanding how to read, write, and parse XML using the XML namespaces in .NET is essential. Today, you'll learn about all the key options of working with XML using Visual Studio .NET and the System.XML namespace.

• Day 13 explains how to create and consume XML Web services in Visual Studio .NET. XML Web services are a cornerstone of the .NET vision, and today you'll see how and why you should be using XML Web services in your applications.

• Day 14 teaches you about components in the .NET Framework. In .NET, there are different categories of components, and understanding when and why to use the various types is important. You will also learn about the different ways that COM components written in non-.NET languages, like Visual Basic 6 and C++, can still be used in .NET.