The best feature, which I'm concentrating on here, is the component creation capabilities of the ActiveX technologies in VB 5.0. Microsoft Transaction Server Developer Edition finally enables VB to scale to hundreds of users. The T-SQL Debugger enables developers to debug stored procedures interactively, at the same time, and on the same IDE client. This process lets you optimize an application and an architecture for performance. VB 5.0 provides the same development paradigm as Visual Basic 4.0.
Developers build interfaces by assembling prebuilt component parts.
VB 5.0 applies the same paradigm to the construction of ActiveX controls, sharing the same development features for traditional Visual Basic applications. Developers can build controls from scratch, from subclass controls, or by combining any number of more than 1,000 commercially available ActiveX controls. Once created, these ActiveX controls can be included in other development environments that are ActiveX-friendly. In other words, they create the bricks with which you can build all sorts of houses. VBA, the native language for Visual Basic, is now the language for hundreds of other products as well, including Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Access, Project, and dozens of non-Microsoft products.