SQL Server Database Programming with Visual Basic.NET

Concepts, Designs and Implementations

Ying Bai

• Publisher: Wiley-IEEE Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781119608509
• eBook ISBN: 9781119608608
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Project Management
• Index: Computer Science

A guide to the practical issues and applications in database programming with updated Visual Basic.NET

SQL Server Database Programming with Visual Basic.NET offers a guide to the fundamental knowledge and practical techniques for the design and creation of professional database programs that can be used for real-world commercial and industrial applications. The author—a noted expert on the topic—uses the most current version of Visual Basic.NET, Visual Basic.NET 2017 with Visual Studio.NET 2017. In addition, he introduces the updated SQL Server database and Microsoft SQL Server 2017 Express. All sample program projects can be run in the most updated version, Visual Basic.NET 2019 with Visual Studio.NET 2019.

Written in an accessible, down-to-earth style, the author explains how to build a sample database using the SQL Server management system and Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio 2018. The latest version of ASP.NET, ASP.NET 4.7, is also discussed to provide the most up-to-date Web database programming technologies. This important book:

• Offers illustrative practical examples and detailed descriptions to aid in comprehension of the material presented
• Includes both fundamental and advanced database programming techniques
• Integrates images into associated database tables using a DevExpress UI tools -WindowsUI

Written for graduate and senior undergraduate students studying database implementations and programming courses, SQL Server Database Programming with Visual Basic.NET shows how to develop professional and practical database programs in Visual Basic.NET 2017/Visual Basic.NET 2019.

Chapter 1
Introduction

For many years during my teaching database programming and Visual Basic.NET programming courses in my college, I found that it is too difficult to find a good textbook for this topic so that I had to combine a few different professional books together as references to teach these courses. 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 the 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 homeworks and exercises for my students. I dreamed 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 the database programming with Visual Basic.NET easily and conveniently. Finally, I decided that I needed to do something for this dream myself after a long time of waiting.

Another reason for me to have this idea is the job market. As you know, most industrial and commercial companies in the US belong to database applications businesses such as manufacturers, banks, hospitals, and retailers. The 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 the 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 college students, how to develop professional and practical database programs in Visual Basic.NET 2017 by using Visual Studio.NET Design Tools and Wizards related to ADO.NET 4.5, and to apply codes that are auto‐generated by various 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 taken 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.

1.1 Outstanding Features About This Book

1. All programming projects can be run in Microsoft Visual Studio.NET 2019 even if all of them are developed and built in Visual Studio.NET 2017.
2. 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.
3. Updated database programming tools and components are covered in the book, such as .NET Framework 4.6, LINQ, ADO.NET 4.5 and ASP.NET 4.7, to enable readers to easily and quickly learn and master advanced techniques in database programming and develop professional and practical database applications.
4. A real completed sample database CSE_DEPT with Microsoft SQL Server 2018 database engine 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.
5. both fundamental and advanced database‐programming techniques are covered to convenience both beginning students and experienced programmers.
6. Various actual data providers are discussed and implemented in the sample projects, such as OleDb, ODBC and SQL Server data providers. Instead of using the OleDb to access the SQL Server, the real SQL Server data provider is utilized to connect to the Visual Basic.NET 2017 directly to perform data operations.
7. The book 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.
8. Good textbook for college students, good reference book for programmers, software engineers, and academic researchers.

1.2 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 SQL Server 2018. Fundamental knowledge and understanding on Visual Basic.NET and Visual Studio.NET IDE is assumed.

1.3 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 SQL Server 2018 is analyzed in detailed 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 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 non‐deferred 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 is 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 developi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• About the Author
• Preface
• Acknowledgment
• About the Companion Website
• 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
• Appendix A: Appendix AInstall and Configure SQL Server 2017 Express DatabaseInstall and Configure SQL Server 2017 Express Database
• Appendix B: Appendix BDownload and Install DevExpress .NET UI ControlsDownload and Install DevExpress .NET UI Controls
• Appendix C: Appendix CDownload & Install FrontPage Server Extension for Windows 10Download & Install FrontPage Server Extension for Windows 10
• Appendix D: How to Use Sample Database
• Index
• End User License Agreement