PREFACE

In July 2000, Microsoft announced the release of its new .NET platform, which represented a major change in the way people think about programming. .NET facilitates object-oriented Internet development. Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET) is a programming language that was adapted from its predecessor, Visual Basic 6, specifically for the purpose of writing applications for the .NET platform. This new version of the Visual Basic language is well suited for developing distributed web applications.