What You Need to Use This Book

To make the best use of this book, you'll need the following ingredients:

• Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP, or Windows Server 2003.

• Visual Studio 2005. Alternatively, you can use a scaled-down Visual Studio version, but you won't be able to complete all the labs. For example, Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition allows you to build Windows applications, console applications, and DLL components (but not web applications), and Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition allows you to build only web applications.

• In addition, if you want to run the database examples in Chapter 5 without any changes, you'll need SQL Server 7.0 or later with the sample Northwind database. SQL Server Express will also work fine.

Because Visual Basic 2005 is currently in a beta cycle, it's inevitable that there will be some changes to the product after this book is printed. (In rare cases, entire features have disappeared from one build to the next!) As a result, it's possible that some recipes may not work as written. Usually, the difference is simply syntactic, such as a minor renaming of a property, constant, or method, or a reshuffling of a class from one namespace to another. Occasionally, a feature changes more dramatically, and significant code revisions are needed. To help manage the confusion, refer to http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/vbadn to download the latest sample code, which is updated regularly to keep in step with newer builds. As an early adopter, you already know that working with beta versions is awkward, frustrating, and more than a little exciting. But all in all, it's a small price to pay for getting an advance seat to see the changes to Visual Basic and the .NET platform!