Visual Basic .NET 2003 provides the easiest, most productive language and tool for rapidly building applications for Microsoft Windows® and the Web. Ideal for existing Visual Basic developers as well as new developers in the Microsoft .NET development environment, Visual Basic .NET 2003 delivers enhanced visual designers, increased application performance, and a powerful integrated development environment (IDE) to get you on the fast track to application development. Developers can use Visual Basic .NET 2003 to:

Address today's Windows and Web development challenges more effectively. Intuitive visual designers for Windows Forms and Web Forms provide a single development model for building both rich desktop applications and broad-reach Web applications. No touch deployment alleviates problems of "DLL Hell" and enables you to deploy Windows–based applications as easily as Web applications. ADO.NET data access provides powerful classes and components for incorporating flexible data scenarios into your applications.
Build tomorrow's applications today. New support for mobile device application development enables you to use the skills you already have to build mobile Web applications and rich Pocket PC-based software. The XML Web service project template makes creating remote business logic components as easy as creating any class in Visual Basic. Optional object-oriented language constructs enable you to save time by reusing code and Windows Forms UI.
Upgrade and reuse existing Visual Basic code. The enhanced Visual Basic .NET Upgrade Wizard, now available in all editions of Visual Basic .NET and Visual Studio .NET, enables you to upgrade existing Visual Basic 6.0 applications to Visual Basic .NET. Existing Visual Basic components can also be seamlessly referenced and consumed within the context of Visual Basic .NET 2003 applications.

Solve Today's Problems More Effectively

Build Robust Windows-based Applications
With new Windows Forms, developers using Visual Basic .NET 2003 can build Windows-based applications that make use of the rich user interface features available in the Windows operating system. Many of the rapid application development (RAD) tools that developers have come to expect are found in Visual Basic .NET 2003, including drag-and-drop form design and the popular "code behind" forms model. In addition, features such as automatic control anchoring and docking eliminate the need for complex form-resize code. Controls such as the in-place menu editor deliver visual authoring of menus directly within the Windows Forms Designer.

Combined with greater application responsiveness, as well as simplified localization and accessibility, these features in Windows Forms make Visual Basic .NET 2003 the choice for today's Visual Basic developers.

Resolve Deployment and Versioning Issues

Visual Basic .NET 2003 delivers the answer to many of your application setup and maintenance problems. If you ever installed a Visual Basic application that somehow broke an existing application—a problem that has come to be known as "DLL Hell"—you will welcome the capabilities of Visual Basic .NET 2003 and the Microsoft .NET Framework.

With Visual Basic .NET 2003, issues with Component Object Model (COM) registration and DLL overwrites are eliminated. Side-by-side versioning enables multiple versions of the same components to exist on the same machine, allowing applications to use the specific version of a component with which they were tested. XCOPY-deployment enables Windows-based applications to be deployed to client machines simply by copying files into the desired application directory. No complicated setup scripts or interactions with the system registry are required. In addition, the auto-downloading of applications for Windows makes the deployment of rich Windows-based applications as easy as deploying a Web page.

Easily Create Web Applications

Using the new Web Forms Designer in Visual Basic .NET 2003, Visual Basic developers can apply the skills they have today to build true thin-client Web-based applications. Drag-and-drop Web Form creation delivers "Visual Basic for the Web" while code behind forms enables developers to replace limited scripting capabilities of the past with the full power and speed of the compiled Visual Basic .NET language. New intelligent rendering capabilities and server-side Web Form controls provide Web applications that render correctly on any browser running on any platform. The new HTML designer simplifies Web page design and delivers IntelliSense® statement and tag completion for HTML documents. In addition, separation of HTML markup and code enable more efficient team-based development.

Use Your Visual Basic Skills to Program Smart Devices

The version of Visual Basic .NET 2003 for professional developers, Visual Studio .NET 2003 Professional, simplifies smart device application development with new integrated support for the .NET Compact Framework. Visual Basic developers skilled in desktop development will find that they can easily use the same visual designers, code editor, debugger, and more importantly, the same programming model to create applications for the Pocket PC as well as other smart devices powered by the .NET Compact Framework. A powerful new integrated emulator also enables developers to build solutions without requiring hardware.

Provides Flexible, Simple Data Access

Visual Basic .NET 2003 lets you tackle any data access scenario easily. Visual Basic .NET provides support for both the new ADO.NET for flexible, highly scalable data access and ActiveX® Data Objects (ADO) data binding for connection-oriented data access. ADO.NET enables XML-based data binding to any database, as well as classes, collections, and arrays using disconnected data access and new classes including the DataSet and DataAdapter. Seamless access to ADO classes enables simple data access with familiar paradigms for connected data binding scenarios.

Get on the Fast Track to Building Tomorrow's Applications Today

Visual Basic .NET 2003 opens the door for Visual Basic developers and offers a smooth transition to building next-generation applications today. Visual Basic .NET 2003:

Supports full object-oriented constructs to enable more componentized, reusable code. Language features include full implementation inheritance, encapsulation, and polymorphism.
Empowers Visual Basic developers to consume XML Web services running on any platform and build Web services as easily as building any class in Visual Basic 6.0.
Enables developers to tackle projects of any size. With new multithreaded capabilities, developers can build massively scalable server-side components and Web applications, as well as more responsive client-side applications that perform multiple tasks in parallel.

Visual Basic .NET 2003 also infuses your applications with built-in security, direct access to the .NET Framework, and the capability to target an extensive array of mobile devices. The rich .NET Framework security model provides fine-grained control over application security while secure Windows Forms eliminate the need for ActiveX controls and ActiveX documents. With complete, direct access to the .NET Framework, developers can quickly access the event log, performance counters, the file system, and more.

Upgrade for Success

Visual Basic .NET 2003 enables developers to leverage their existing skills and code assets when moving to the .NET development environment. Using the COM interoperability built into the .NET Framework, developers can continue to use most of the components they have been using for years. COM interoperability provides bi-directional communication between applications written in Visual Basic 6.0 and those written in Visual Basic .NET, without the need to rewrite your code. Visual Basic 6.0 and Visual Basic .NET can reside comfortably on the same machine, smoothing your transition.

In addition, ActiveX control hosting enables you to reuse your existing ActiveX controls on new Visual Basic .NET Windows Forms. Full support for existing ADO code and data binding means that you can preserve your data access experience in Visual Basic .NET.

To take full advantage of the new features in Visual Basic .NET 2003 and the .NET Framework, developers can upgrade their code using the Visual Basic .NET Upgrade Wizard, available in all editions of Visual Basic .NET 2003 and Visual Studio .NET 2003. This wizard upgrades up to 95 percent of existing Visual Basic 6.0 code and forms to Visual Basic .NET. By combining COM interoperability with the Upgrade Wizard, you can implement an incremental migration strategy to gradually upgrade existing Visual Basic 6.0 components and projects.

When you start developing in Visual Basic .NET, you will have immediate access to all the resources you need to get up and running quickly—from the multitude of books already written on Visual Basic .NET, to comprehensive training, to online samples and help within the product. In addition, with Visual Basic .NET 2003, you are developing applications using the most popular, easy-to-write programming language in the world.


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