Sams Teach Yourself .Net in 21 Days

By Jason Beres

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • About the Technical Editor
  • Acknowledgments
  • We Want to Hear from You
  • Introduction
  • Week 1: At a Glance
  • Day 1. Introduction to the Microsoft .NET Framework
  • Day 2. Introduction to Visual Studio .NET
  • Day 3. Writing Windows Forms Applications
  • Day 4. Deploying Windows Forms Applications
  • Day 5. Writing ASP.NET Applications
  • Day 6. Deploying ASP.NET Applications
  • Day 7. Exceptions, Debugging, and Tracing
  • Week 1. In Review
  • Week 2: At a Glance
  • Day 8. Core Language Concepts in Visual Basic .NET and C#
  • Day 9. Using Namespaces in .NET
    • What Are Namespaces?
    • Finding the Information You Need About Namespaces
    • Using Namespaces in Your Applications
    • Working with Your Environment
    • Working with Files and Directories
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Quiz
    • Exercises
  • Day 10. Accessing Data with ADO.NET
  • Day 11. Understanding Visual Database Tools
  • Day 12. Accessing XML in .NET
  • Day 13. XML Web Services in .NET
  • Day 14. Components and .NET
  • Week 2. In Review
  • Week 3: At a Glance
  • Day 15. Writing International Applications
  • Day 16. Using Macros in Visual Studio .NET
  • Day 17. Automating Visual Studio .NET
  • Day 18. Using Crystal Reports
  • Day 19. Understanding Microsoft Application Center Test
  • Day 20. Using Visual SourceSafe
  • Day 21. Object Role Modeling with Visio
  • Week 3. In Review

Q&A

1. I looked in my hard drive, and couldn't find System.Environment.Dll. Where is it?

   The classes and namespaces you learn about throughout these 21 days aren't necessarily in a separate DLL or even contained in a single DLL. When you get to Day 14, you'll learn about the global assembly cache and how .NET stores assemblies there.

2. I'm writing in C#. Sometimes, the auto-list members don't show up when I reference a class. Why?

   C# is a case-sensitive language, meaning that you can't use uppercase and lowercase and expect the Visual Studio .NET IDE to figure out what you're trying to type. Visual Basic .NET isn't case sensitive, so it's more friendly in the code window when you're typing along.

3. The I/O application we wrote was cool. But where can I get more information about reading and writing different kinds of files? I know I won't be doing simple text files all the time.

   If you look in the following directory on your machine, you'll find a few more good examples of using I/O:

   \Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NETFrameworkSDK\Samples\QuickStart\howto\samples\io\readwrite
   

   You can also find some useful System.IO articles at the following links:

   http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnadvnet/html/vbnet07232002.asp

   http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dv_vstechart/html/vbtchUseFileStreamObject.asp

   http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dv_vstechart/html/vbtchVBAFileIOWhitepaper.asp

   Each of the preceding links offers further information on I/O in .NET. Remember to read all about I/O in the SDK too—there's a ton of good information there.

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