How This Book Is Organized

C#Builder Kick Start is divided into four parts:

I Overview of C#Builder and the C# Programming Language

II Windows Forms Client Application Development

III ASP.NET Web Application Development

IV Enterprise Application Development

Part I: Overview of C#Builder and the C# Programming Language

This part provides information on .NET, introductory material on the C#Builder IDE, and a C# programming language tutorial.

Chapter 1: Introducing .NET and the C# Builder IDE

Developers who are familiar with programming for other platforms, such as Win32, are often surprised and wonder about behavior and performance characteristics of the .NET platform. Developing .NET applications is different, and this chapter begins by explaining those aspects of .NET that will help you understand many of the questions you'll have. After setting the stage for the environment you'll be working in, I'll provide an overview of the C#Builder IDE, showing what things are and information needed for accomplishing basic tasks.

Chapter 2: C# Basics

This is the first of three chapters that teach the amount of C# that you will need to understand examples in the rest of this book. It includes important information on value and reference types, operators, statements, loops, methods, arrays, enums, properties, and indexers.

Chapter 3: Intermediate C#

This chapter takes you deeper into C# with more coverage of reference types and their members. It also covers important aspects of object-oriented programming in C#. The last section explains how to handle program errors with exceptions.

Chapter 4: Advanced C#

The advanced information in this chapter covers operator overloading, conversions, delegates, events, and interfaces. The section on interfaces is supplemented with specific examples of how interfaces are used in .NET.

Chapter 5: Managing Code and Projects

C#Builder has an interactive debugger that includes the ability to set breakpoints with conditions, watch program state, examine threads, log debugging events, and much more. The C# Project Manager helps organize project files and references to external libraries and COM objects for COM Interop. A very powerful tool called Model View allows you to navigate code via its logical structure, examine types in a manner similar to object and class browsers, and view the relationships between types. The Model View diagrams are presented as UML static structures.

Part II: Windows Forms Client Application Development

This part provides you with information on how C#Builder allows you to build Windows Forms applications, user controls, and components. Other things you can do in C#Builder are create menus and toolbars and work with common dialogs. Sometimes you will need to create your own custom 2D graphics, which is covered in a chapter on GDI+.

Chapter 6: Introduction to Windows Forms and Windows Controls

This chapter introduces the basics of Windows Forms. It explains the code that C#Builder creates and shows how to use the visual designer to build graphical user interfaces.

Chapter 7: Windows Forms Dialogs

The Windows Forms library includes classes for using common controls that Win32 programmers are familiar with. This chapter explains how to use the MessageBox class and then covers each of the common controls, which are accessible via drag-and-drop operations from the Tool Palette in C#Builder.

Chapter 8: Windows Forms Resources

Menus, toolbars, and status bars are very common elements for Windows Forms applications. This chapter explains how to add each of these to your applications. It also shows how to add context-sensitive menus to controls.

Chapter 9: Windows Forms Graphics with GDI+

At some point, most developers need to be able to draw graphics in the client area of a program. This chapter shows how to use GDI+ to draw 2D graphics in the client area of a Windows Forms application.

Chapter 10: Windows Forms User Controls and Components

In this chapter, you will learn how to create Windows Forms user controls and components. The benefits are that you will increase productivity in developing applications by taking advantage of the inherent properties of reuse that user controls and components can deliver.

Part III: ASP.NET Web Application Development

ASP.NET is the .NET technology for building Web applications. The chapters in this section will explain more about what ASP.NET is, managing state, securing your site, and creating controls.

Chapter 11: Introduction to ASP.NET

This chapter introduces ASP.NET concepts and shows how to use C#Builder to create Web Forms in the visual designer. ASP.NET comes with many controls and has a GUI design capability that is as easy as the one for Windows Forms.

Chapter 12: ASP.NET Application Events and State Management

The Web is inherently stateless, which in the past has made application development on the Web challenging. ASP.NET has the capability to manage state for an application, and this chapter explains how it works.

Chapter 13: ASP.NET Security

With all the malicious code and hackers on the Web today, we need a way to secure our sites. ASP.NET provides a capability known as Forms Authentication. This chapter shows how to implement and configure Forms Authentication so you can protect your site.

Chapter 14: ASP.NET Custom and User Controls

In this chapter you will learn how to create custom controls and user controls for your ASP.NET applications. ASP.NET custom controls and user controls are reusable and help increase productivity in application development.

Part IV: Enterprise Application Development

This part covers the subjects that are essential to enterprise-class applications. It includes building databases with ADO.NET, binding data sources to Windows Forms, ASP.NET controls, and data grids, implementing XML Web Services, and application deployment.

Chapter 15: ADO.NET and File I/O

ADO.NET is the .NET technology for communicating with databases. This chapter will show how to use a database in both connected and disconnected scenarios. Examples use the Borland Data Provider, which is Borland's ADO.NET data provider for connecting to multiple databases.

Chapter 16: Data Binding

Data binding is the ability to connect data sources to GUI controls and data grids. This chapter shows how to bind data sources to Windows Forms controls, the Windows Forms DataGrid control, and the ASP.NET Repeater, DataList, and DataGrid.

Chapter 17: XML Web Services

An XML Web Service is a message-passing API that allows computer systems to communicate via open standards and protocols. This chapter explains how to implement a Web service and build a client for a Web service.

Chapter 18: Assemblies, Versioning, and Deployment

When development is complete, a project must be deployed in Release mode. This chapter explains how to prepare a project for release, deploying shared assemblies to the Global Assembly Cache (GAC), precompiling assemblies with NGen.exe, and using the InstallShield trial edition.