ADO.NET Programming in Visual Basic .NET By Steve Holzner, Bob Howell
Table of Contents
Chapter 3. Visual Basic .NET Database Tools
There are several other types of applications you can create. I will describe them in brief here. We will look into some of these in later chapters.
Class library This is a group of components you wish to access from other applications. The most typical use for this is a middle- tier business rule layer, but they have other uses as well. The database components are all part of a class library, as are all of the other assemblies in the references of any application. You can also use a class library to build a set of classes to be inherited from.
Windows control library This type of project contains Windows user controls. You would use this to build controls to use on Windows Forms.
ASP.NET Web Service This is also a middle-tier component but it is designed to be accessed using HTTP protocol. All communication is handled by SOAP and data is transmitted as XML. ASP.NET Web Services can have a web-based client or can have a Windows GUI-based client.
Web control library These are groups of controls designed to be used on Web Forms.
Windows service This is an application designed to run in the background as a Windows service. Examples of services are SQL Server, IIS service, event logging, and so forth.
