MS1016 Mastering Enterprise Development Using Microsoft Visual Basic 6

Day 1

Chapter 1: Microsoft's Enterprise Development Strategy

Topics:

Introduction to enterprise development
Island Hopper News sample application
Microsoft Visual Studio 98 development system, Enterprise Edition

Lab:

Exploring Island Hopper, the lab case study

Skills:

After completing this chapter, students will be able to:

• 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:

Implementing business services using Microsoft Visual Basic
Creating COM DLLs in Visual Basic
Working with COM DLL projects
COM DLL registration

Lab:

Building a component

Skills:

After completing this chapter, students will be able to:

• 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:

Overview of MTS
MTS architecture
Using MTS Explorer
Deploying an MTS component

Lab:

Adding a component to MTS

Skills:

After completing this chapter, students will be able to:

• 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:

Overview
Building MTS components
Managing object state
Debugging and error handling
MTS programming best practices

Labs:

Creating an MTS component
Using Shared Property Manager

Skills:

After completing this chapter, students will be able to:

• 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:

Universal data access overview
Retrieving and modifying records using ActiveX Data Objects
Using ADO from the middle tier
Executing stored procedures from the command object
Advanced topics

Lab:

Using ADO to implement business services

Skills:

After completing this chapter, students will be able to:

• 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:

Introduction to Microsoft SQL Server
Implementing business and data services with SQL Server
Programming with Transact-SQL
Creating stored procedures

Lab:

Creating and debugging stored procedures

Skills:

After completing this chapter, students will be able to:

• 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:

Introduction to security
Implementing security in MTS applications
Overview of SQL Server security
Using SQL Server integrated security
Security best practices

Labs:

Implementing security in MTS
Implementing security in SQL Server

Skills:

After completing this chapter, students will be able to:

• 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:

Interfaces
Clients and interfaces

Lab:

Interfaces

Skills:

After completing this chapter, students will be able to:

• 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:

Overview of advanced client/server technologies
Message queuing
Server clustering
Accessing mainframe data

Lab:

Using a message queue

Skills:

After completing this chapter, students will be able to:

• 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.