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Dan Mabbutt

Updated Articles and Resources

By Dan Mabbutt, About.com Guide since 2002

    Updated Articles and Resources
    • Declaring Reference Types in VB.NE Created: Saturday, May 19, 2012 Updated: Saturday, May 19, 2012
      A reference type in VB.NET is an object stored in a type of memory called the Heap. Program code doesn't use the memory directly; it uses pointers to the memory instead. If you create a class in yo...
    • The VB.NET Form as a Class Created: Saturday, May 12, 2012 Updated: Saturday, May 12, 2012
      The Form is a special object in VB.NET, but it's still a class. This Quick Tip covers some of the implications of this fact.
    • Classes - Base Classes and Derived Classes Created: Thursday, May 10, 2012 Updated: Thursday, May 10, 2012
      Classes are the heart of .NET and VB.NET because they're the way Object Oriented Programming (OOP) is actually implemented. A class is the basis of an object. This is one of a series of detailed ar...
    • Classes - The Class Diagram Tool in Visual Studio Created: Saturday, May 05, 2012 Updated: Monday, May 07, 2012
      The Class Diagram tool in Visual Studio Professional can help you code your VB.NET programs in multiple ways. You may not be using this tool now because it's just not required for writing programs....
    • VB.NET Versus Python in a Recursion Program Created: Saturday, April 28, 2012 Updated: Tuesday, May 01, 2012
      A personal perspective of Python based on my attempt to code a finite state machine in Python. After struggling for days to write the program in Python, I wrote the same program in a few hours in V...
    • VB.NET Custom Events Created: Wednesday, March 28, 2012 Updated: Monday, April 16, 2012
      VB.NET Programmers usually know about handling multiple events with the same subroutine or how to code a delegate. (VisualBasic.About.com articles cover all of these things too.) These are parts of..
    • Shared Members and Instance Members in VB.NET Created: Saturday, July 22, 2006 Updated: Monday, April 16, 2012
      A method or property can either be shared, so that the code in the actual Class definition is executed, or it can called through an instance of the Class. This article describes what these two thin..
    • Shared Variables in VB.NET Created: Saturday, April 14, 2012 Updated: Monday, April 16, 2012
      Most programmers know about shared methods and properties in VB.NET. Not as many know about shared variables, but this relatively obscure use of Share can add power to your coding toolkit as well. ..
    • Shared Events in VB.NET Created: Monday, April 16, 2012 Updated: Monday, April 16, 2012
      Most programmers know about shared methods and properties in VB.NET. Shared events are a fairly rare item in code, however. They're primarily useful when you have a parameterized constructor that m..
    • ASP.NET Hub Database Explorer and Creating a Database Created: Saturday, April 07, 2012 Updated: Saturday, April 07, 2012
      Using the Database Explorer in Visual Web Developer to create a database is covered in this short article
    • Visual Web Developer Created: Saturday, August 14, 2010 Updated: Saturday, April 07, 2012
      Visual Web Developer is Microsoft's free development environment for the web. This article introduces Visual Web Developer for the Visual Basic programmer.
    • Do you use the SQL or traditional dot notation to code LINQ? Created: Friday, October 16, 2009 Updated: Friday, April 06, 2012
      The SQL query nototation and the dot notation are equivalent ways to express a LINQ query. Which one do you use?
    • LINQ to Objects - Collections, the LINQ Way Created: Saturday, March 10, 2012 Updated: Friday, April 06, 2012
      LINQ to Objects was misnamed by Microsoft. It should really be LINQ to Collections, but somebody probably decided that didn't have the right marketing feel to it. Another way to think of it is
    • LINQ to Entities - LINQ Using the Entity Framework Created: Saturday, February 25, 2012 Updated: Friday, April 06, 2012
      Working with databases inside application code has always been a problem, mainly because there are lots of different databases (with different interface requirements) and because the data in databa..
    • LINQ to DataSet - Using Language Integrated Query with ADO.NET DataSets Created: Saturday, February 18, 2012 Updated: Friday, April 06, 2012
      Microsoft's LINQ (Language Integrated Query) technology is designed to work with any data store, but LINQ to SQL (introduced in a different Visual Basic About.com article) only works with SQL Serve..
    • LINQ and XML - Using Language Integrated Query with XML data Created: Friday, February 10, 2012 Updated: Friday, April 06, 2012
      Microsoft's LINQ technology combined with XML can revolutionize the way you program, but it's difficult to make the transition from more traditional ways of programming XML such as the W3C DOM to L..
    • LINQ - Using LINQ to SQL in VB.NET Created: Saturday, February 04, 2012 Updated: Friday, April 06, 2012
      One way to classify the innovations introduced with LINQ - Language INtegrated Query - is by all of the datastores supported by Microsoft. One of the first datastores people want to use is SQL wher..
    • Expression Trees - A VB.NET and LINQ Feature Created: Saturday, January 28, 2012 Updated: Friday, April 06, 2012
      Expression Trees are possibly the most advanced language extension that was introduced with LINQ. They make the VB.NET compiler emit Expressions; something other than IL (Intermediate Language) cod..
    • Anonymous Types - A VB.NET and LINQ Feature Created: Thursday, January 26, 2012 Updated: Friday, April 06, 2012
    • Option Infer - A VB.NET Language Option for LINQ Created: Wednesday, January 18, 2012 Updated: Friday, April 06, 2012
      Option Infer is a compile option that was introduced specifically for LINQ with Framework 3.5/VB.NET 2008. It's just a little more complicated than the other compile options. (Option Strict, Option..
    • LINQ - An Example Driven Introduction to Language Integrated Query and Lamda Expressions Created: Saturday, January 14, 2012 Updated: Friday, April 06, 2012
      LINQ - Language Integrated Query - is the reason a whole host of new technolgies were introduced in VB.NET 2008. For example, Lamda expressions and partial methods. This article is the first in a s..
    • LINQ Queries - Deferred Queries - An Example Driven Introduction Created: Saturday, November 21, 2009 Updated: Friday, April 06, 2012
      LINQ - Language Integrated Query - is the reason a whole host of new technolgies were introduced in VB.NET 2008. For example, Lamda expressions and partial methods. Another technology that was intr..
    • LINQ Queries Created: Friday, October 16, 2009 Updated: Friday, April 06, 2012
      LINQ - Language Integrated Query - is the reason a whole host of new technolgies were introduced in VB.NET 2008. For example, Lamda expressions and partial methods. Another technology that was intr..
    • A LINQ Example Program for XML in Visual Basic .NET Created: Tuesday, June 16, 2009 Updated: Friday, April 06, 2012
      Microsoft's LINQ technology combined with XML can revolutionize the way you program, but it's difficult to make the transition from more traditional ways of programming to LINQ. Moving to XML can b..
    • VB.NET Custom Events Custom Event Declaration Created: Thursday, April 05, 2012 Updated: Thursday, April 05, 2012
      VB.NET Programmers usually know about handling multiple events with the same subroutine or how to code a delegate. (VisualBasic.About.com articles cover all of these things too.) These are parts of..
    • Visual Basic .NET 2010 Express - Using XML Created: Saturday, April 01, 2006 Updated: Friday, March 23, 2012
      Part 8 of the VB Express tutorial introduces the use of XML in .NET. VB.NET 2010 includes a lot of support for XML. To cover the technologies, we will update to the Signature Block example program ..
    • Build Configurations in VB.NET Created: Saturday, March 17, 2012 Updated: Saturday, March 17, 2012
      Visual Studio gives you a lot of power to customize the
    • References and Namespaces in VB.NET Created: Saturday, September 16, 2006 Updated: Thursday, March 15, 2012
      The concept of a namespace is new to VB.NET and this makes it one of the things that can confuse someone making the switch from VB 6 to VB.NET. This article explores the concept of a namespace and ..
    • Beginning Lambda Expressions - An Intro to Lamda in VB.NET Created: Friday, February 20, 2009 Updated: Tuesday, March 06, 2012
      Lambda expressions were introduced in VB.NET 2008/Framework 3.5 and they have a reputation as being really difficult, partly because of the name. In fact, getting started with lamda expressions is ..
    • Using For-Each to Iterate Through a Multidimensional Array of Different Types Created: Saturday, March 03, 2012 Updated: Saturday, March 03, 2012
      Multidimensional arrays have always been obscure, and they're normally not the
    • The Entity Framework, a Microsoft database technology for .NET Created: Saturday, February 25, 2012 Updated: Saturday, February 25, 2012
      The Entity Framework is only the latest in growing collection of technologies that are all aimed at making it easier for application code to work with databases. Introduced with Visual Studio 2008/..
    • Exploring Text Files and String Processing Created: Tuesday, November 16, 2004 Updated: Friday, February 17, 2012
      About Visual Basic Class Instructions for Chapter 12 of the Complete Course for VB.NET covering Text Files and String Processing.

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