Advanced Visual Basic 6: Power Techniques for Everyday Programs (Developmentor Series) - Softcover

Curland, Matthew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0201707128 ISBN 13: 9780201707120

Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional, 2000

Synopsis

In Advanced Visual Basic 6, two of the world's leading VB experts take experienced developers "under the hood" with VB, introducing powerful techniques for writing high-performance, reusable code that leverages the close relationships between VB, COM, and OLE Automation. This book presents advanced VB programming from a COM data type approach, helping developers build more robust, effective code -- and overcome obstacles that appear as they "push the envelope" with VB. Developers learn how VB describes arrays, and how to duplicate that definition manually to perform simple type casting, and gain unprecedented control over how their programs use memory. The authors introduce best practices for interface-based design using normal VB class modules; show how to partition code for optimal reuse; and more. Next, they present advanced techniques for creating COM lightweight objects; and alternate memory management techniques that allow the creation of complex systems with many objects and minimal overhead. The book also covers threading, type libraries, component versioning, and more.

About this title

Review:

Written by a Microsoft insider and well-respected VB expert, Matthew Curland's Advanced Visual Basic 6 is a unique guide to extending the reach of VB into COM and object design. This compendium of tips and strategies for doing more in Visual Basic is perfect for intermediate to a advanced developers seeking to overcome bottlenecks in performance and functionality in their favourite programming tool.

The underlying message is that Visual Basic lets you work more efficiently with Microsoft COM if you implement a few extra routines that look under its hood. A custom library of routines (called VBoost) comes with the book. Each chapter shows how to use this code, beginning with new ways to use pointers and access COM internals to enhance performance with such features as arrays, strings, threads and classes. The most notable techniques use memory more efficiently (including code that creates large numbers of objects faster). More advanced readers will appreciate the in-depth guide to building COM objects programmatically within VB. (The book shows you how to create lightweight COM objects using custom routines). For the real guru, there's even a section on how to use inline assembly language within Visual Basic. Later sections turn to a host of techniques for multithreading, doing more with windows and how to manage and customise COM-type libraries for successful real-world deployment. Armed with these custom routines and an expert's-eye view of VB internals, you'll be able to get more out of Visual Basic with faster, more versatile programs. --Richard Dragan

From the Publisher:

A compendium of practices, techniques and utilities
In Advanced Visual Basic 6, leading Visual Basic expert Matthew Curland demonstrates powerhouse techniques programmers can use to write high-performance, robust, and reusable VB code. Readers learn how to leverage the close relationships between VB, COM, and OLE Automation, extending the envelope of VB's capabilities and building high-quality, object-based systems.

Key topics include how to:

Control VB array variables explicitly to directly access arbitrary memory locations Call pointers to standard, cdecl, and class module functions Aggregate complete interface implementations into any VB object Override functions on any interface, including those implemented automatically by VB Turn any user-defined type into a lightweight COM object Minimize memory usage in systems with a large number of objects Safely create and manage threads in ActiveX EXEs and DLLs Interact with messages to customize windowed and windowless UserControl objects contains extensive source code samples to enable all techniques without external DLLs. It also provides integrated type library add-ins for creating and editing referenced libraries, modifying binary compatibility files, and customizing the type libraries that VB generated for ActiveX components.

With this compendium of best practices, sophisticated techniques, and valuable utilities, VB programmers will gain a deeper understanding of VB's inner workings and be able to extend its object-oriented capabilities.

About this edition

• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0201707128
• ISBN 13: 9780201707120
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 516