Professional Visual Basic 6 Databases

Visual Basic is the #1 programming tool in the world and 70% of VB applications involve a database. However, there is little advanced information for VB database programmers that has been proven in the real world.

This book has broad coverage of many issues relating to advanced database design and implementation using VB6. The main feature is the demonstration of the 3 tier solution, enabling more scalable applications.

From the coverage of 2 tier solutions a thorough grounding of SQL Server 7, ADO and Database design is provided. The graduation to 3 tier applications is achieved through a practical demonstration of the techniques learned.

Professional Visual Basic 6 Databases provides some of the latest thinking about creating business objects using Visual Basic (VB) 6 and MTS on the Microsoft platform. This book is perfect for readers with previous VB experience who want to bring their skills up to speed with today's three-tiered architectures.

Besides describing how to create useful VB 6 objects that work in conjunction with MTS for transaction support, this book includes two standout sections. First, its introduction to using SQL includes not only a guide to the basics but also a thorough tour of joins, grouping options, and stored procedures. Another excellent chapter shows off the basics of data warehouses, along with the Microsoft Dimension and Cube wizards used to generate them on SQL Server 7.

The overall shape of this book starts with using Microsoft tools to build an older-style two-tiered VB application. Next, it's a state-of-the-art three-tiered approach where VB 6 runs objects on the middle tier using ADO, MTS, and SQL Server stored procedures on the back end. (The author also shows off some useful tips for optimizing network traffic with remote objects.) The book closes with an ASP-based example for an e-commerce shopping cart, bringing the whole book around to today's thin client, browser-based interfaces. Handy reference sections provide quick lookups for all ADO objects.

Overall, Professional Visual Basic 6 Databases delivers a solid tutorial geared toward the intermediate VB programmer. It's all you need to be productive with Microsoft's "official" three-tiered approach for building robust applications. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered: ADO, ODBC, and SQL basics; two- and three-tiered architectures; SQL Server 6.5/7.0 stored procedures and triggers; Microsoft data warehousing; MOLAP, ASPs, and deployment.