In the writing of these programs, we gain valuable experience in problem solving. The programs can be fun, frustrating, exhilarating, aggravating, inspiring, and many other things. But they do teach you to program. This doesn't replace a beginning course in programming by any means, but it can be great for people who already know what they want to do, and just need the tools to do it. A competency exam located in Appendix A to help professors and students move more rapidly into Visual Basic.
Students can judge their own mastery of fundamental topics, on their own time.
Programs supplied on disk are indicated by the word samples in italics at the beginning of sections. Chapter 1, Designing and Coding Programs , explains the application development cycle, user interface design, coding guidelines, error handling, and performance optimization. Chapter 3, Objects and Collections, introduces objects, collections, the ListView, TreeView, and CoolBar controls, and MDI applications. Chapter 5, ActiveX Data Objects, concentrates on direct programming with ADO object methods, properties, and events. Chapter 6, Relational Databases and SQL, shows how to design multi-table databases, create SQL queries for searching, sorting, define recordsets, modify recordsets, and use validation rules.