VB.NET Technology

Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) developed by Microsoft. It can be used to develop console and graphical user interface applications along with Windows Forms applications, web sites, web applications, and web services in both native code together with managed code for all platforms supported by Microsoft Windows, Windows Mobile, Windows CE.

Architecture

It does not support any programming language, solution or tool intrinsically. Instead, it allows plugging in various types of functionality, that is coded as a VSPackage.

The IDE provides three services

1. SVsSolution, which provides the ability to enumerate projects and solutions
2. SVsUIShell, which provides windowing and UI functionality (including tabs, toolbars and tool windows)
3. SVsShell, which deals with registration of VSPackages.

In addition, the IDE also manages for coordinating and enabling communication between services. All editors, designers, project types and other tools are implemented as VSPackages. Visual Studio uses COM to access the VSPackages. The Visual Studio SDK also includes the Managed Package Framework (MPF).

which is a set of managed wrappers around the COM-interfaces that allow the Packages to be written in any CLI compliant language. However, MPF does not provide all the functionality exposed by the Visual Studio COM interfaces. The services can then be consumed for creation of other packages, which add functionality to the Visual Studio IDE.

Features of Microsoft Visual Studio

Code editor :

Code editor that supports syntax highlighting and code completion using IntelliSense for not only variables, functions and methods but also language constructs like loops and queries.

Debugger :

It works both as a source-level debugger and as a machine-level debugger. It works with both managed code as well as native code and can be used for debugging applications written in any language supported by Visual Studio.

Designer :

It includes a host of visual designers to aid in the development of applications. These tools includes

• Windows Forms Designer : It includes a palette of UI widgets and controls (including buttons, progress bars, labels, layout containers and other controls) that can be dragged and dropped on a form surface.
• WPF(Windows Presentation Foundation) Designer : It is used to author user interfaces targeting Windows Presentation Foundation. It supports all WPF functionality including data binding and automatic layout management.
• Web designer/development : It is used for developing ASP.NET applications and supports HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It uses a code-behind model to link with ASP.NET code. From Visual Studio 2008 onwards, the layout engine used by the web designer is shared with Microsoft Expression Web.
• Class designer : The Class Designer can generate VB.NET code outlines for the classes and methods. It can also generate class diagrams from hand-written classes.
• Data designer : The data designer can be used to graphically edit database schemas, including typed tables, primary and foreign keys and constraints. It can also be used to design queries from the graphical view.
• Mapping designer : The mapping designer is used by LINQ to SQL to design the mapping between database schemas and the classes that encapsulate the data.

Other tools

ToolBox Explorer

Open Tabs Browser

It is used to list all open tabs and to switch between them. It is invoked using CTRL+TAB.

Properties Editor

It is used to edit properties in a GUI pane inside Visual Studio.

Object Browser

It can be used to browse the namespaces (which are arranged hierarchically) in managed assemblies.

Solution Explorer

It is used to manage and browse the files in a solution.

Team Explorer

It is used to integrate the capabilities of Team Foundation Server, the Revision Control System into the IDE (and the basis for Microsoft's CodePlex hosting environment for open source projects). In addition to source control it provides the ability to view and manage individual work items (including bugs, tasks and other documents) and to browse TFS statistics.

Data Explorer

It is used to manage databases on Microsoft SQL Server instances.

Server Explore

It tool is used to manage database connections on an accessible computer.

Included products

• Microsoft Visual C++ : It is Microsoft's implementation of the C and C++ compiler and associated languages-services and specific tools for integration with the Visual Studio IDE.
• Microsoft Visual C# : Microsoft's implementation of the C# language, targets the .NET Framework, along with the language services that lets the Visual Studio IDE support C# projects.
• Microsoft Visual Basic : Microsoft's implementation of the VB.NET language and associated tools and language services. It was introduced with Visual Studio .NET (2002).