Microsoft .NET is an advance in programming technology that greatly simplifies application development, both for traditional, proprietary applications and for the emerging paradigm of Web-based services. .NET is a complete restructuring of Microsoft’s whole system infrastructure and represents a major learning challenge for programmers developing applications on Microsoft platforms. There is substantial change to the Visual Basic language, including its object-oriented features. But learning the new programming language is only part of the challenge. The much greater challenge is learning the .NET Framework and all its capabilities.

This three-day course covers the essentials of the .NET Framework for programmers who already know the Visual Basic language and the fundamentals of Windows Forms. It pairs with the course “Visual Basic Essentials” to form a five-day introduction to Visual Basic and the .NET Framework for experienced programmers.

The course is current to .NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005. It focuses on core portions of the .NET Framework that are common across many application areas. Separate courses are available in specific areas, such as ADO.NET, XML Programming, Windows Forms, ASP.NET and Web services.

The course starts with an introduction to the architecture and key concepts of .NET. It then discusses class libraries, assemblies, versioning, configuration, and deployment, which constitute a major advance in the simplicity and robustness of deploying Windows applications, ending the notorious “DLL hell.” The next two chapters discuss important topics in the .NET programming model, including metadata, reflection, I/O, and serialization. The following chapter continues the discussion of the .NET programming model, covering memory management, threading, asynchronous programming, application domains, marshal by value, marshal by reference, and.NET remoting,.

.NET Security is introduced in some detail, including both code access security and role-based security. The next chapter covers interoperability of .NET with COM and with Win32 applications. The course concludes with an introduction to database programming using ADO.NET. SQL Server 2005 Express Edition is used in database examples.

The course is practical, with many examples and a case study. The goal is to equip you to begin building significant applications using the .NET Framework. The student will receive a comprehensive set of materials, including course notes and all the programming examples.

.NET Training Learning Objectives

• Gain a thorough understanding of the philosophy and architecture of .NET
• Acquire a working knowledge of the .NET programming model and .NET Security
• Learn how to implement database applications using .NET