The Visual Basic Team : Paul Yuknewicz

Improvements to Visual Basic 6 Runtime Support on Vista, Windows Server 2008 (by Paul Yuknewicz)

VBTeam — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 23:46:31 GMT

You probably didn’t notice it, but we made some important and beneficial changes to the Support Statement for Visual Basic 6.0 on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 just a few weeks ago, and I want to share the good news.

First, just like Vista, the Visual Basic 6 runtime is officially supported on Windows Server 2008.

Second, we have expanded the list of ActiveX controls that are officially supported as part of Vista and Windows Server 2008.

For background, when we first announced over a year ago that the Visual Basic 6.0 applications would “just work” on Windows Vista, many of you pointed out there were a number of widely used ActiveX controls, such as comctl32.ocx and richtx32.ocx, listed as “tested but not shipping.” That basically means they aren’t supported on Vista, even though they are important pieces of many Visual Basic 6 applications. So the Visual Basic team spent the last year-plus talking with product teams all over Microsoft and offered to take over the code base for those components so we could support them. Now, we’re pleased to announce that we have added support for a number of controls and components commonly used in VB6 apps, and identified compatible upgrades for some less commonly used controls.

To summarize we hope these improvements will make you even more successful in preserving your VB6 assets. This should provide some peace of mind as you think about moving forward gradually to VB.NET, the most used MS .NET language, in VS2008 and future versions.

Best,

Paul Yuknewicz

LINQ for the Web Using VB (By Paul Yuknewicz)

VBTeam — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 06:55:00 GMT

Happy holidays! It's been a long time since I've written a post, so I figure I can bring in the new year answering some great questions submitted by you.

Just this week someone gave me this feedback:
"I am having a difficult time finding information to help me adapt to LINQ in my webforms. I am hoping that someone from the team can offer a direction. "

You bet! We have a lot of attention to LINQ and Forms-over-data in VB in our learning content, but we're lacking content with attention to LINQ and Web-based Forms-over-data.

There are a number of great innovations in the Web space that make it easy to leverage LINQ's querying capabilities and mesh that with the richness and flexibility of Web-based UI. It's easy.

There are a few concepts you should learn or know about to get started:

LinqDataSource control -- allows you to use a LINQ query as a data source in Web-based data binding
LinqDataSource.Selecting event - allows you to set any LINQ custom query (including anonymous queries) as the data source. Simply pick LinqDataSource and Selecting events from the VB editor dropdowns, and set e.Result = <your LINQ query> in the event handler code
OR Designer and Linq to SQL - if you're connecting directly to a SQL database with your LINQ query (instead of objects, xml, etc), this is an easy way to create queries and what we call DataContext objects. "OR" is short for Object-Relational mapping, i.e. mapping relational database data to .NET objects
ASP.NET data binding expressions - allows you to evaluate ASP-style <%# Eval("YOURFIELD") %> expressions from data source fields or properties in simple controls or lists of controls

Creating a Simple Web Form with LINQ To SQL

The first post will cover the simplest Web form that will demonstrate this end to end span of concepts. I'll then take input from you to add features and expand on this sample in future posts.

Here's a sample of the initial desired Web form output - a very simple Employee list report for an HR application - admittedly it's bare bones and in need of UI design love:

EmployeeID: 2
Andrew Fuller
Andrew received his BTS commercial in 1974 and a Ph.D. in international marketing from the University of Dallas in 1981. He is fluent in French and Italian and reads German. He joined the company as a sales representative, was promoted to sales manager in January 1992 and to vice president of sales in March 1993. Andrew is a member of the Sales Management Roundtable, the Seattle Chamber of Commerce, and the Pacific Rim Importers Association.

EmployeeID: 1
Nancy Davolio
Education includes a BA in psychology from Colorado State University in 1970. She also completed "The Art of the Cold Call." Nancy is a member of Toastmasters International.

If you are pretty familiar with Visual Studio I expect this will take about 10-15 minutes to walk through on your own machine.

Preparation

- make sure you have Visual Studio 2008 or Visual Web Developer 2008 Express installed. Express Editions are available for download here.
- make sure you have SQL Server 2005 Express installed and running. It typically gets installed by default with VS or VS Express, however, you can also install it from here.
-if you don't have Northwind.mdf on your machine, download it from the attached files on this post.

Adding Data to the Web Site

First we're going to add the database to our project and create necessary classes to use the database in LINQ (using Linq to SQL). Note, you could choose to skip this step and create your own custom LINQ query to any other data source.

create a new Web site on the local file system via File -> New Web Site ... -> ASP.NET Web Site
add the Northwind database to your web site's App_Data folder
1. download Northwind.mdf file from this blog entry and save it to disk
2. drag and drop this file into the App_Data folder in Solution Explorer
Create LINQ to SQL classes for Northwind using the OR Designer. Linq to SQL classes will be stored in a .dbml file and can be opened in the visual OR Designer.
1. Right-click on the WebSite node in Solution Explorer, Add New Item -> Linq To SQL Classes
2. Rename the file from "DataClasses.dbml" to "NorthwindDataClasses.dbml". (This is important so classes can be found in code and in VS wizards).
4. When prompted, click Yes to add this file to the App_Code folder. This is important b/c the Web sitfe needs to dynamically compile generated code created by the designer.
6. Double click NorthwindDataClasses.dbml to open it in the OR Designer.
Add Employee table objects to your Linq to SQL classes
1. Open Server Explorer (or Database Explorer in Express)
2. Expand Northwnd.MDF -> Tables -> Employees
3. Drag and Drop the Employees table node from Server Explorer to the NorthwindDataClasses.dbml design surface (NOTE: you could continue to add more Tables, or Stored Procedures, or customize the names/properties in the designer).
4. Save All files

Laying Out Form UI & DataSource Controls

Now that we've added the database to the Web site and created necessary LINQ to SQL classes, it's time to create some UI and wire up the data to the UI. I won't do anything too fancy - just repeat data bound labels in a DataList (you could replace this with GridView, FormView or choose your favorite control).

Double-click Default.aspx to open the page in the designer
Drag n drop a DataList from the data tab of Toolbox to the Default.aspx design surface (or to the correct DIV area in mark up "Source" view)
Drop n drop a LinqDataSource control from the data tab of the Toolbox to the Default.aspx design surface (or just below the DataList in "Source" view)

Wiring up the LinqDataSource to Underlying Data (LINQ to SQL - DataContext)

The LinqDataSource needs to be wired up to the underlying LINQ data. In this case data is provided by any DataContext object or query over an object of the NorthwindDataClasses type (a LINQ to SQL file). The DataList then simply needs to use the LinqDataSource as the data source, and display data from bound fields using traditional Eval("") statements. The designer will generate a set of defaults for you if you use the Smart Tags. Let's give it a shot with defaults, and then we can fine tune it from there.

Select the LinqDataSource control in the designer. Expand the smart tag and click Configure Data Source...
A wizard pops up and should default to picking your NorthwindDataClasses as the source. (any other queryable sources you add will show up here). Click Next.
You can optionally pick any specific subset of columns/fields. I just chose * for this example. You could even configure a Where clause -- however I honestly think it's easier to do parameterized queries and other query operations in code. I'll show that later ... Click Finish.
Optionally you can Enable Delete, Insert, and Update for the LinqDataSource using the Smart Tag. TIP: This is handy if you're going to build a read/write web form.

Here is the resulting mark up for the LinqDataSource as seen in "Source" view. Note how the ContextTypeName="NorthwindDataClassesDataContext" -- this matches the name of the type we created in the designer (the code gen appends "DataContext" to the end -- whew that's long!). The TableName is set to the Table or Property we want to display -- Employees in this case. You could use this pattern to bind to any DataContext type and class property within.

<asp:LinqDataSource ID="LinqDataSource1" runat="server" ContextTypeName="NorthwindDataClassesDataContext"
    TableName="Employees">
</asp:LinqDataSource>

Binding UI Controls to LinqDataSource

Now let's wire up the DataList to the LinqDataSource. The nice thing here is the DataList only cares about the field names returned from the LINQ query via the LinqDataSource -- this shields you as you continue to refine the fields and row results of your dynamic LINQ queries.

Select the DataList in the designer. Expand the smart tag and Choose Data Source = LinqDataSource1
Customize the DataList's ItemTemplate
Run it! (F5 or View in Browser)

The wizard will create a series of bound labels by default. You can use the designer in edit mode to get the specific fields, look and feel you want. TIP: This is typically where I drop in the html mark up "Source" view. In my example, I'll simply show the full name, notes, and have a place holder to show an employee photo image. I also format the data in a two column table.

If you look at the DataList mark up, you see the ItemTemplate contains a number of bound labels. Binding to data from the query is simply a matter of typing in <%# Eval("YOURFIELDNAME") %> in your server control fields using classic ASP-style & VB data binding eval statements. This gives you a lot of flexibility to display just the data you want, formatted how you want. Here's my customization:

<div>
    <asp:DataList ID="DataList1" runat="server" DataKeyField="EmployeeID" DataSourceID="LinqDataSource1">
        <HeaderTemplate>
            <table>
        </HeaderTemplate>
        <ItemTemplate>
            <tr>
                <td>
                    <img src="PLACEHOLDER.jpg" class="" style="border: 4px solid white" 
                          alt='Photo Number XXX' />
                    <br /><br />
                </td>
                <td>
                    EmployeeID:
                    <asp:Label ID="EmployeeIDLabel" runat="server" Text='<%# Eval("EmployeeID") %>' />
                    <br />
                    <asp:Label ID="LastNameLabel" runat="server" 
                          Text='<%# Eval("FirstName") & " " & Eval("LastName") %>' />
                    <br />
                    <asp:Label ID="NotesLabel" runat="server" Text='<%# Eval("Notes") %>' />
                </td>
            </tr>
        </ItemTemplate>
        <FooterTemplate>
            </table>
        </FooterTemplate>
    </asp:DataList>
</div>

Using Custom LINQ Queries

The technique above provides a zero-code method for binding Web forms to LINQ data. However, you might be asking yourself, where is the LINQ and VB here? It's true the LinqDataSource hides all the querying code and constrains what you can do via the designer. This is fine for some simple cases, but the real power of LINQ is being able to use your own free form queries and VB logic. The good news is LinqDataSource supports using your own LINQ queries using the LinqDataSource.Selecting event. This is your hook to tell the control exactly what query should be used. It's easy. Here's how:

Right-click on Default.aspx and select View Code ... to see the VB code behind file (Default.aspx.vb).
In the left-hand-side dropdown above the code editor, select the LinqDataSource1 object.
In the right-hand-side dropdown above the code editor, select the Selecting event. The event handler is stubbed out.
Write your custom LINQ query in the event handler. Make sure you set e.Result = <your LINQ query variable> before the event handler routine is finished running.

In my example I will query over Northwind employees, define a custom expression column called FullName (=First + Last), filter by full name starting with A or N, and sort by last name. Note I'm creating aliases for each property and hence the query is now an anonymous type -- and the schema is now custom vs. my default NorthwindDataContext with all (*) columns. TIP: if you're getting runtime errors when you try this make sure all the fields expected by your Web form are there -- e.g. if the form is expecting "EmployeeID" make sure your query Selects it.

Protected Sub LinqDataSource1_Selecting(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e _
                                        As System.Web.UI.WebControls.LinqDataSourceSelectEventArgs) _
                                        Handles LinqDataSource1.Selecting

    Dim northwind As New NorthwindDataClassesDataContext

    'custom anonymous LINQ query
    Dim query = From emp In northwind.Employees _
                Select emp.EmployeeID, emp.FirstName, emp.LastName, emp.Notes, _
                    FullName = emp.FirstName & " " & emp.LastName _
                Where FirstName.ToUpper.StartsWith("A") Or FirstName.ToUpper.StartsWith("N") _
                Order By FullName

    'sets LinqDataSource query equal to custom query.  
    'use data binding expressions to look up aliased fields above. 
    e.Result = query
End Sub

You can run the app again and see the custom query is working -- only two rows are returned -- Andrew Fuller and Nancy Davolio. We could also tweak the markup to make use of our new aliased expression column -- "FullName". Here's how that would look in the DataList:

<asp:DataList ID="DataList1" runat="server" DataKeyField="EmployeeID" DataSourceID="LinqDataSource1">
    <HeaderTemplate>
        <table>
    </HeaderTemplate>
    <ItemTemplate>
        <tr>
            <td>
                <img src="PLACEHOLDER.jpg" class="" style="border: 4px solid white" alt='Photo Number XXX' />
                <br /><br />
            </td>
            <td>
                EmployeeID:
                <asp:Label ID="EmployeeIDLabel" runat="server" Text='<%# Eval("EmployeeID") %>' />
                <br />
                <asp:Label ID="LastNameLabel" runat="server" Text='<%# Eval("FullName") %>' />
                <br />
                <asp:Label ID="NotesLabel" runat="server" Text='<%# Eval("Notes") %>' />
            </td>
        </tr>
    </ItemTemplate>
    <FooterTemplate>
        </table>
    </FooterTemplate>
</asp:DataList>

Summary & More Info

To wrap things up, it's easy to map what you know about Web Forms to what you're learning about Linq in VB. The LinqDataSource connects your underlying Linq to SQL DataContext, or any generalized Linq query, to the rest of your Web Form. You can create totally custom queries in the LinqDataSource.Selecting event and pass that to the control via e.Result. And then you can get at any field or property in your Linq query using classic Eval("MYFIELD") data binding expressions.

What do you think? What additions would you like to see?

If you want more info now, ScottGu put together an awesome series of Linq to SQL posts for the Web, and he included VB sample code. Another great portal for learning and How To content is www.asp.net.

Best,

Paul

----------------------------------

Paul Yuknewicz
Lead Program Manager
Microsoft Visual Studio
http://msdn.com/vbasic/

Visual Basic Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow with Paul Vick (Beth Massi)

VBTeam — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 22:00:00 GMT

Scott Hanselman posted a podcast with with Paul Vick, Principal VB Architect, and Paul Yuknewicz, Senior Program Manager on the VB Team about the past, present and future of Visual Basic. Check it out!

Enjoy,
-Beth Massi, VS Community

Why you should learn WPF (and how I can help)

VBTeam — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 16:00:00 GMT

A few weeks ago I mentioned I was working on a side project. Well, then the soccer, tennis, and school season hit and..well I won't tell you the rest. What I had started to do was take all of the samples in Charles Petzold's book Applications = Code + Markup and rewrite them in VB for publication to the VB community. I had invited anyone else to do the same as it was a great way to learn WPF, and for the customers I will be focussing on over the next few years (the small business developers and IT pros) there was method behind my madness; especially for those still using VB6.

One of my fellow Program Managers, Paul Yuknewicz, put me in contact with Charles and he agreed to allow me to publish all of the samples in his book in Visal Basic. At home I had gotten to rewriting these through chapter 10, but in order to get the quality I need for publication, I need to re-do them. So today I offer you chapter 1 (attached). Oh yea, and I created these project files in Visual Studio 8 beta 2 to encourage your downloading of our latest work.

I invite you along with me on this journey of learning WPF for several reasons. First, I've always believed that Visual Basic was about creating stunning applications rapidly. WPF is a very powerful technology and I am looking to build a community around developers who are sharing ideas about creating great end user experiences - getting out of the grey form white textbox. The second reason is our big investment in Silverlight. Over time, as Silverlight evolves, I predict that a lot of the lessons learned in creating great desktop applications with WPF, will translate over to Silverlight with little effort.

Yesterday, a group of us spent a day locked in a room figuring out how to improve Visual Basic for the small business developer and IT departments. I mentioned before that we were looking for people in the area to help us learn more about their pain points with using Visual Basic to develop applications rapidly. We are now prepared to cast that net further. If you are anywhere and are willing to contribute a little time and help us shape our products, please contact me (patd@microsoft.com).

Lastly, before I go off and do my day of soccer with my boys, I want to remind folks that we have set up a Small Business Developer's forum. I encourage you to visit there and share your experiences or ask any questions.

Patrick Dengler

Interop Roadmap – UserControls, MDI, and Data

VBTeam — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 02:53:00 GMT

Recently the VB team released the Interop Forms Toolkit, which allows VB6 developers to extend their existing applications using .NET. The toolkit allows developers to write a regular Windows Form in VB.NET, click “Generate Wrapper Classes”, and then call those forms from VB6. It also provides mechanisms for firing and handling events, and sharing application state (i.e. Globals).

We’ve heard a lot of great feedback since the release. For example, we heard that a better interop story and things like the toolkit help enable more gradual migrations. We also heard that several scenarios would benefit from additional support. Based on this we’ve been planning our next steps.

Here’s a preview of the direction we’d like to head in with interop. Two of the main areas we’re looking at are:

Interop UserControl support – this is basically the next step after the Interop Toolkit that enables .NET UserControls to be hosted in VB6 forms using interop. As you’ll see below you can leverage UserControls to enable more UI interop scenarios.
Data Interop – looking at what we can provide to make it easier to pass data between VB6 and .NET.

You can think of UserControl support as an extension to the Interop Forms Toolkit that adds a few more flexible ways to handle UI interop. For example, UserControls allow users to add .NET UI extensions within the same form. Also, given that a UserControl can be added to any VB6 form, there is good fidelity and communication between the VB6 forms.

As a case in point, MDI form scenarios are not supported by the current Interop Forms Toolkit due to several limitations with Windows Forms interop and the VB6 IDE. MDI support has been a top request since the release. The good news is that we believe the UserControl approach enables interop with MDI forms!

We have decided to share a very early (community supported only) Interop UserControl prototype with you to validate our direction and approach. This prototype is a UserControl project template for VS 2005 that includes attributes, helper functions, configuration, and workarounds required to do basic UserControl interop scenarios. You can use it to create a UserControl with UI, methods, properties, and even events. Simply build it and then add it to your VB6 toolbox.

To install the template, please see the file attached below called InteropUserControl.zip. This is a Visual Studio 2005 template that you can try out by placing it in your “My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Templates\ProjectTemplates\Visual Basic” folder. Again, this is only an early prototype so expect to hit some issues and use workarounds. We hope to release a more complete version of this in the future.

We’re really interested in your feedback on this approach, so please try out the template and let us know what you think!

Jonathan Aneja & Paul Yuknewicz

Check out "Live from Redmond series #3" from the .NET FX product teams

VBTeam — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 02:27:00 GMT

The .NET Framework teams are providing several Live Meeting presentations spanning application technologies like Smart Clients, Web 2.0 (AJAX) and Mobile. Check out SimonMu's blog for more information:
http://blogs.msdn.com/simonmu/archive/2006/10/09/The-next-series-of-team-member-Live-From-Redmond-webcasts.aspx

Simon also pointed me to a great video archive:
http://www.asp.net/learn/videos/default.aspx?tabid=63#ajax

If you're a VB developer and you're interested in these modern .NET app types, I think you'll want to check this out. Enjoy!

Best,

Paul Yuknewicz
Visual Basic Team

EMEA Tour Followup

VBTeam — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 01:55:00 GMT

PaulYuk and I just returned from the EMEA tour where we demoed tons of new VB 2005 features to groups in Brussells, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Belfast, and Dublin. Here (as promised) are links to more information on what I presented. If you didn't make it to the presentations, check out the below. Lots of interesting material!

Was good to visit everyone on the trip. Paul and I had a great time visiting everyone.

Start Clients Using Office:

Main page -> http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/understanding/vsto/default.aspx

Good overview -> http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/understanding/vsto/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/odc_vsto2005_ta/html/officewhatsnewinvsto2005.asp

My.Blogs Location -> http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/odc_vsto2005_ta/html/odc_vstoOutlookMyBlog.asp

http://msdn.microsoft.com/VBasic/Downloads/Code/MyBlogs/

Smart Clients Using Mobile Devices:

Main page -> http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/learning/mobile/

Tips/Tricks

Community

VB Forums -> http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/default.aspx?ForumGroupID=10&SiteID=1

Submit bugs/suggestions -> http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/productfeedback/default.aspx

Main VB web site -> http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/

VB6 Migration site -> http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbrun/

IDE

Refactor for VB -> http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/downloads/tools/refactor/

Snippit editor -> http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/downloads/tools/snippeteditor/

IDE Customization -> Go under Tools/Import-Export Settings

XML Comments à Shows you how to customize this! http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=321766&SiteID=1

Find all References à http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vsintro7/html/vxtsksearchingobjectss.asp

AutoCorrect -> Should be obvious from using it

Incremental Search -> http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/wcepbguide5/html/wce50tskFindingaStringUsingIncrementalSearch.asp

Debugger

Immediate Window -> http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam/archive/2005/12/05/500252.aspx

Edit & Continue -> Modify your code while in break model

Debugging Attributes -> Really good article on things you can do: http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/04/05/VisualStudio2005Debugging/

Debugging Visualizers -> Example of creating them in VB http://blogs.msdn.com/deeptanshuv/archive/2005/03/21/400194.aspx

Command Window -> http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/vsintro7/html/vxurfcommandmodecommandwindow.asp

TracePoints -> Right-click on line of code and choose insert tracepoint

Language Improvements

My Extensibility -> http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/05/07/My/

Generics -> http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnvs05/html/vb2005_generics.asp

Using Statement -> http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/htd05whh.aspx

Continue / Isnot -> Simple, but new for VB 2005

Warnings -> You can customize these from Compile project designer page

Winforms Improvements

These features are not new to this version, but are new to VB6 users. They are easily found in help

Anchoring/Docking

Tab order/Menu Editor

Inherited Forms

Forms Localization

New features:

Background Worker object

Bind to settings

Document outline window

New Containers

Table/Flow layout

Splitter

This article has links to all these features and much more http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/35f2fe4h.aspx

Application Model

Good general link: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/tzdks800.aspx

VB6 Interop

Great series of articles on using .net components from VB6 http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbrun/vbfusion/

Feel free to contact me (toddap@microsoft.com) if you have any questions about code samples or information that was given in the talks. Thanks again for attending!

Todd Apley

New PAG book & tool to help learn VB6 to VB.NET migration approaches (by PaulYuk)

VBTeam — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 02:01:00 GMT

Jackie GoldStein, our partner and friend, just created a great post talking about the new resources created by the MS Patterns and Practices Team.

I think these are must have assets for any team thinking about an upgrade. Here are a few more notes from my perspective:

Migration Guide -- a very helpful book covering how a development team can approach a migration to VB.NET. This has been compiled using best practices learned by actual customers, the MS field, VB Team members like Joe Binder, and partners like Keith Pleas. Use this to help scope out and plan your migration.
VB Migration Assessment Tool -- a tool that analyzes and reports helpful metrics when you?re considering a migration. You get things like # of lines of code/modules/classes/forms, a dependency graph, cost/time estimation tool. Use this to help scope out and estimate the resources needed for a migration.

All resources are available for FREE download here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/?url=/library/en-us/dnpag2/html/VB6ToVBNetUpgrade.asp

All other resources are available on http://msdn.com/vbrun/

Please tell me what you think about these new resources.

Best,
Paul