Mastering Enterprise Development Using Microsoft Visual Basic 6

Introduction

At Course Completion

• Compare traditional client/server development with Internet development and describe Microsoft's enterprise development strategy,
• Use the Application Architecture Model from the Microsoft Solutions Framework to organize applications into user, business, and data services.
• Use the Microsoft Visual Basic programming system to build component object model (COM) dynamic-link libraries (DLLs) and implement them in a multiuser environment using Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS).
• Use MTS to address application infrastructure issues associated with building server-side COM objects that are used by many clients.
• Create COM objects that use MTS services to participate in transactions and that use security.
• Use programming techniques to increase the scalability of COM objects.
• Use ActiveX® Data Objects (ADO) from the middle tier to access data and invoke business and data services implemented in SQL.
• Implement business and data services in a Microsoft SQL Server™ database through the use of stored procedures.
• Apply basic debugging, error handling, and security techniques in a three-tier application.

Microsoft Certified Professional Exams

• To be determined

Prerequisites

• Build and debug a simple Visual Basic-based application
• Invoke and control an Automation server, such as Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Word, from a Visual Basic-based application
• Create COM components using Visual Basic and invoke them from a client application
• Use ActiveX Data Objects to open a database and work with record sets
• Understand and use basic syntax for SQL

• Course 1013, Mastering Microsoft Visual Basic 6 Development
• Course 1017, Mastering Web Site Development Using Microsoft Visual InterDev™ 6

Course Materials and Software

You will be provided with the following software for use in the classroom:

• Microsoft Windows NT® Server network operating system version 4.0
• Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 3
• Microsoft Windows NT Option Pack 4
• Mastering Enterprise Development Using Visual Basic 6
• Microsoft SQL Server version 6.5
• Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 Service Pack 4
• Microsoft Internet Explorer
• Microsoft Visual Basic, Enterprise Edition, version 6.0
• Island Hopper sample application

Course Outline

Day 1

Chapter 1: Microsoft's Enterprise Development Strategy

Topics:

Lab:

Skills:

• Explain the general terms related to client/server architecture.
• Describe the high-level architecture of an enterprise solution using Microsoft's enterprise development strategy.
• Describe the component object model and its advantages.
• Describe the main features of the Process and Application Models in the Microsoft Solutions Framework.
• Describe the Island Hopper News sample used as the business problem in this course.
• List the Microsoft development tools, products, and technologies that will be used to build the technical solutions to the course labs.

Chapter 2: Building COM DLLs with Visual Basic

Topics:

Lab:

Skills:

• List the ways that you can implement business services in an enterprise solution that you develop in Visual Basic.
• Use class modules to define an object in a Visual Basic project.
• Create a COM DLL that exposes methods.
• Set compile properties for a COM DLL.
• Test a COM DLL.
• Register a COM DLL.

Day 2

Chapter 3: Introduction to Microsoft Transaction Server

Topics:

Lab:

Skills:

• List the issues related to developing multiuser, three-tier applications.
• Explain how MTS addresses three-tier issues.
• Describe the MTS architecture.
• Create a package with MTS Explorer.
• Add an existing component to the MTS package.
• Configure a client computer to use MTS components.

Chapter 4: Using MTS Transaction Services

Topics:

Labs:

Skills:

• Describe what a transaction is and how it conforms to the ACID (atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability) properties.
• Describe how MTS manages context for objects.
• Participate in transactions by calling the SetComplete, SetAbort, EnableCommit, and DisableCommit methods of the MTS ObjectContext object.
• Describe four ways to manage state for an MTS object.
• Use the Shared Property Manager to store shared state for MTS objects.
• Debug an MTS object at runtime.

Day 3

Chapter 5: Accessing Data from the Middle Tier

Topics:

Lab:

Skills:

• Compare and contrast the Microsoft universal data access architecture and data access technologies available in enterprise development.
• List and describe the objects in the ADO object hierarchy.
• Write an MTS component in Visual Basic that retrieves and updates records in a Microsoft SQL Server database.
• Use ADO to call a stored procedure.
• Through the use of ADO, utilize advanced, SQL Server-specific features from an MTS component, such as prepared statements, cursors, and disconnected record sets.
• Write MTS components that are optimized for data access in an enterprise solution.

Chapter 6: Building Stored Procedures with SQL

Topics:

Lab:

Skills:

• Choose when to implement services in database or MTS objects.
• Implement business and data services by using stored procedures.
• Explain the role of data integrity when implementing data services in an enterprise solution.
• Write a stored procedure that uses SQL programming constructs, such as conditional branching and looping structures, and error checking.
• Describe the characteristics of SQL transactions and explain how they work with MTS transactions.
• Write a stored procedure that generates return.
• Debug a stored procedure.

Day 4

Chapter 7: Implementing Security

Topics:

Labs:

Skills:

• List the advantages of three-tier security over two-tier security in enterprise solutions.
• Implement declarative security for MTS packages by using MTS roles and Windows NT user and group accounts.
• Describe the three security modes available in SQL Server.
• Assign permissions to a login using SQL Server Enterprise Manager.
• Implement integrated security by using Windows NT user accounts and SQL Security Manager.
• List best practices associated with implementing security in enterprise solutions.

Chapter 8: Implementing COM with Visual Basic

Topics:

Lab:

Skills:

• Define, create, and implement an interface.
• Create multiple classes that use the same interface and multiple interfaces per class using Visual Basic.
• Describe the purpose of Interface Definition Language (IDL) files and use OLEVIEW to view the contents of an IDL file.
• Describe how IDispatch is used to implement Automation servers to expose services to objects and how dual interfaces make the process more efficient.
• Describe the types of binding that Visual Basic uses with objects, and choose the correct type of binding based on performance and flexibility requirements.

Day 5

Chapter 9: Advanced Client/Server Technologies

Topics:

Lab:

Skills:

• Describe a scenario where an asynchronous message queuing model is used.
• Using Microsoft Message Queue Explorer, create a new message queue and set properties for the queue, such as size and security.
• Write a Visual Basic-based application that sends messages to or receives messages from a message queue.
• Describe how Microsoft Cluster Server can be used to enhance the availability of server applications.
• List the Microsoft technologies that enable access to data in legacy database systems.