List of Sidebars

Chapter 1: Your Future with COBOL

Reformations, Transitions, and Having Fun

About the J4

What About Sun Microsystems and Microsoft?

What About Compaq?

"COBOL Has Been Around for Forty YearsI Repeat, FORTY Years"

Choose a Software VendorEven for Desktop Tools

Assess Your Access to a Computer

.NET and Platform Independence

Spread the Word: Be an Evangelist!

Chapter 2: What Is .NET?

An Opportunity to Choose

Good Design Practices Are Still Needed

The User Is Still Always Right!

Portable Devices Have Windows

Include Security As Part of Your Web Application Design

.NET Supports Component Object Model (COM) Interoperability

The .NET Compact Framework

Extended Learning Objective

Chapter 3: .NET Retraining Prerequisites, Part 1

Staying Onboard the Speeding Technology Train

Going Forward, Registry Usage Will Amount to Two Typical Scenarios

A Word of Caution About Installations

The Importance of Learning the Microsoft Software Packages

Chapter 4: .NET Retraining Prerequisites, Part 2

But Wait, There's More to Microsoft Visio 2002

The Future of HTML: XHTML

How Many Prerequisite Languages Are There?

Chapter 5: Inside the .NET Integrated Development Environment

What About the Modern Mainframe Tools?

Choosing a VS .NET Project Type Extends Beyond Language Choice

The Electronic Mentor

Editor Basics Yesterday and Today

Getting Help

What Is an Object Model?

What an Opportunity!

What About C#?

Chapter 6: The Nuts and Bolts of .NET Programming

Perspective Check

To Be or Not to Be CLS Compliant

Applauding Fujitsu Software Corporation

Chapter 7: The .NET Framework

Referencing the Appropriate Assembly

Reuse Through Object-Oriented Design

Irregular Regular Expressions

Chapter 8: The .NET Common Language Runtime

Having Fun with Acronyms

Samples, Samples, and More Samples

Chapter 9: Creating and Using Objects

The Elusive Object

A Minimalist View

Going Full Circle Around the Object

Chapter 10: A New Perspective Toward Data

Users Putting the "I" in "I/O"

Adding Metadata with Attributes

Chapter 11: Database Programming with .NET

Still in Shock

Sample Databases

Why Do I Use the VS .NET Help Option?

Commendation vs. Condemnation

Business Users Are Not the Enemy

Chapter 12: XML in a Managed Environment

Creating the XML Schema Programmatically

Chapter 13: Windows Forms, Web Forms, and No Forms

Pseudonyms and Aliases

Leave Your Attitude at the Door, Please

The Windows Forms Designer

VS .NET: Designed with Developer Productivity in Mind

Chapter 14: Adding Value to Your Interface

Looks Like a Page, Acts Like a Page, but They Called It a User Control

Chapter 15: Managing Cache and State for ASP.NET

The Key/Value Pairs in the Collections Namespace

Holding My Breath, Waiting for Microsoft to Call Me

Handlers, Modules, and Application-Level Events

A Quick Mainframe CICS Diversion

Hey, They Forgot to Create a Session Object!

Chapter 16: Reporting and Information Delivery

Windows Forms Controls for Printing

What About the HTML Mailto URL?

Chapter 17: Deploying Your .NET Application

How Are You Going to Distribute Your Package?

Chapter 18: Configuration for .NET Applications

Hard Coding

Working with the CodeAccessSecurityExampleVB Sample Application

Chapter 20: Developing for the Enterprise

Planning for Distributed, Asynchronous, or Concurrent Mainframe Applications

Changing the Path Value

Other .NET Support for Asynchronous Processing

Do You Remember the Application State Management Topic?

One Last Shameless Plug

Appendix A: Debugging and Testing

.NET Exception Handling