Beginning VB.NET (Programmer to Programmer)

Mathew Reynolds After working with Wrox Press on a number of projects since 1999, he is now an in-house author for Wrox Press writing about and working with virtually all aspects of Microsoft .NET. He's also a regular contributor to Wrox's ASPToday and C#Today, and Web Services Architect. He lives and works in North London and can be reached on matthewr@wrox.com. Richard Blair is Web Application Architect specializing in Microsoft Web Technologies, focusing on emerging technology and its impact on business and development. Key areas that he has helped clients evaluate include: streamlining the electronic business process, expanding access to vital information, and creating usable systems. He now works as a Senior Consultant for SEI-Information Technology. Besides his consulting work, he has also co-authored Professional ASP XML, Beginning Visual Basic .NET, and Professional VB.NET, all published by Wrox Press Ltd. Richard has a dual concentration bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan in English Literature and Theatre, so not only is he a Web Architect, he could play one on TV. Richard welcomes qu estions and comments at richblair@hotmail.com. Jonathan Crossland is co-author of Professional Windows DNA, Professional VB.NET, and Beginning VB.NET. He is currently working at Yokogawa Electric Corporation in the UK, where he is happily involved with the creation of software for the Batch manufacturing industry. Jonathan has been working in and out of various software technologies for eight years now, and spends most of his time in C# and ASP.NET. Jonathan also works with VB, VB.NET, and web technologies such as JavaScript, DHTML, XML, ASP, and of course, writing Web Services. Thearon Willis began his career in computers in 1980 as a computer operator. During the fall of 1980 he took a course in BASIC programming using the Radio Shack TSR-80 computer and has been hooked on programming ever since. After learning the BASIC language, Thearon moved on to learn COBOL and began writing programs to help automate some of his daily tasks as a computer operator. Advancing his career, Thearon became an Operations Analyst and learned several other languages to assist in his job. In 1989, Thearon moved into Systems Programming and started programming in S370 assembler language. He coded batch programs in assembler language and then moved on to code CICS programs. The Help Desk and Network Operations used these batch and on-line programs to perform some of their daily tasks, such as monitoring CICS printers and polling sales. During this time, he started working with relational databases on the mainframe and immediately saw the benefits that relational databases provided. Between the years of 1988 and 1993, Thearon learned several more programming languages, which include QBASIC, Pascal and C++. Thearon decided that he enjoyed programming so much that he switched his career path and became a developer full time. The first application that Thearon worked on was written in assembler language and included over 70 assembler programs. To help automate some of the tasks that were performed by the department that used this application, he wrote several programs in Visual Basic. One of these programs read and processed data from message queues that were populated from the mainframe and performed automated balancing. Thearon currently works as a senior consultant and develops intranet applications using ASP, DHTML, XML, JavaScript, VBScript, VB COM components, and SQL Server. He lives with his wife Margie and daughter Stephanie in the Raleigh, North Carolina area.