In this week, you will build upon the skills you developed in Week 1. Emphasis will move to developing skills you need for application development in a workgroup environment. In addition, you will create tools that you use in every Visual Basic database application.
Most of the material covered this week requires the Professional Edition of Visual Basic. However, if you are working with the Standard Edition of Visual Basic, you will still be able to learn a great deal from this week's lessons.
You will learn about Visdata, a data management tool more powerful than the Data Manager. You will have lessons on the SQL data definition language, Visual Basic Data Access Objects (DAO). Other lessons cover how to use Visual Basic code to create database applications; displaying data with graphics; error trapping; and data-bound lists, combo boxes, and grids.
When you've completed this week's lessons, you know most of the techniques needed to build solid Visual Basic database applications using Visual Basic code. You'll also have several Visual Basic code libraries that you can use in future Visual Basic projects. The following sections describe this week's lessons in more detail.
Day 8: Today, you learn how to use Visdata, which is a data management tool similar to Data Manager, but with many more features. You learn how to compile this project as well as add it to the Visual Basic Add-Ins menu. This tool assists you in building databases, defining tables, and executing SQL statements.
Day 9: You begin the first of three days devoted to one of the most important topics in database programming—Structured Query Language (SQL). After learning a definition of what SQL can do for you, you learn the basics of this powerful and simple language. You learn about SQL clauses you can use to select and sort records from your databases. You also learn SQL keywords such as SELECT, ORDER BY, WHERE, DISTINCTROW, TOP N, TOP N PERCENT, and GROUP BY. You also study SQL Aggregate functions (SUM, AVG, and so on), joins, union, and cross tab queries.
Day 10: In this lesson, you delve into the database engine that ships with Visual Basic 4—Microsoft JET. You learn the hierarchical design and use of the Data Access Object (DAO) available to you in your development. The emphasis is on the methods, properties, and events of each object.
Day 11: In the previous week, you used the data control to attach databases. Today, you temporarily abandon use of the data control in favor of writing Visual Basic code to manage data. You learn the pluses and minuses of this practice. During the lesson, you build a library of tools that can be dropped into any Visual Basic application to assist in data management.
Day 12: You get graphical in Day 12. Users can identify trends and deviations in data much more quickly with graphics and charts than they can with raw data. You learn how to use the graph tool that ships with Visual Basic 4 to give your applications a polished, graphical appearance. During the lesson, you construct a graph library of routines that you can use in all your future Visual Basic projects.
Day 13: This day won't be unlucky because you learn about the data-bound list boxes, combo boxes, and grids that ship with Visual Basic 4. You also learn how to use subforms to display data.
Day 14: The final lesson this week focuses on error trapping. No one intends to release a product with bugs in it, but it does happen. Error trapping manages these bugs, and many other unforeseen kinds of problems. Emphasis is on different kinds of errors an application can encounter and how to handle each. You also build a reusable error trapping module that can be dropped into any Visual Basic application.
You've got a great deal of information to cover—so, let's begin Week 2!