Microsoft .NET

Microsoft .NET Course

Synopsis

This .NET course covers application development for the Microsoft .NET 3.5 framework using the VB or C# programming languages with Visual Studio 2008.

The theory is reinforced by building web and desktop applications that connect to data sources including a SQL Server database and an XML feed. Topics covered in the lectures and exercises include the concepts of object-oriented programming; collections and iteration; connecting to data with ADO.NET; Language-Integrated Query (LINQ); building desktop applications with Windows Presentation Foundation; building secure web applications with ASP.NET and deploying and consuming web services with the Windows Communication Foundation.

Each delegate has the use of a computer; course hours are 9:00 to 5:00. Lunch and refreshments are included.

Two Languages

During day one, the syntax of both C# and VB.NET is covered; subsequently delegates can complete the exercises using their preferred language.

Course Content

Introduction to the .NET Framework:

• The Common Language Specification and compliant languages.
• Overview of the Framework Class Library.
• Description of the Common Language Runtime.
• The Visual Studio 2008 development environment.
• Using the built in documentation.

Language Primer:

• Building a simple Console application.
• Declaring and importing namespaces.
• Introduction to object orientated programming and classes.
• Variables and built-in data types.
• Operators.
• Decisions and Branching.
• Strings.
• Arrays and Collections.
• Loops.
• Enumerations.
• Errors and Exception Handling.
• Catching and throwing exceptions.
• Building code documentation from XML documentation comments.

Inheritance and Polymorphism:

• Class hierarchies and the Object class.
• Visual Studio class diagrams.
• Overriding methods.
• Forwarding constructor calls.
• Understanding and using polymorphism.

Interfaces:

• Understanding interface types.
• Defining and implementing custom interfaces.

ADO.NET part 1: the connected layer:

• Understanding ADO.NET data providers.
• Visual Studio's user interface to the SQL Server database.
• Using project properties to store connection strings.
• Reading from and writing to a database using Connection and Command objects.
• Understanding and using database transactions.

ADO.NET part 2: the disconnected layer:

• The structure of a Data Set.
• Using a Data Adapter to read from a database into a Data Set.
• Interrogating and updating a Data Set.
• Writing changes to the Data Set back to the database.
• Handing concurrency conflicts.

Language-Integrated Query (LINQ):

• LINQ to Objects - The structure of a LINQ query; using LINQ query operations with collections classes and arrays.
• LINQ to DataSet - Projection from a Data Row to a custom object.
• LINQ to SQL - Defining an Entity class; mapping between entities and database tables.
• LINQ to XML - Reading from an XML data source.

ASP.NET:

• Understanding web applications and the role of HTTP and HTML.
• Building a simple ASP.NET page and separating presentation from logic.
• The life cycle of an ASP.NET page.
• Working with Themes and Master Pages.
• The role of the Web.config file.
• Binding web controls to a variety of data sources including an object, a database, an XML feed and a Site Map.
• Client-side validation and regular expressions.
• Web application security including authentication and authorisation.
• The role of the Global.asax file.
• Understanding the ASP.NET View State.
• State management techniques including the use of Session variables and the Application cache.
• Using ASP.NET profiles.
• Asynchronous page updates with AJAX.
• Publishing the Website.

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF):

• The motivation behind WPF.
• Building a user interface using XAML mark-up.
• Handling application logic in a code-behind class.
• Overview of XAML controls and panels.
• Writing to the file system, including isolated storage.
• Building composite components and understanding routed events.
• Data binding between a data source and a WPF control.
• Type conversion and the IValueConverter interface.
• Displaying data bound lists.
• Navigation and hyperlink columns.
• Reading from an XML feed into a Flow document.
• Windows and Click-once deployment.
• Partial trust and XAML browser applications.

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF):

• The role of WCF.
• The basic composition of a WCF application.
• Specifying the transport protocol and message encoding.
• Building and hosting a WCF web service.
• Connecting to the service from a XAML browser application.

Advanced Programming Constructs:

• Extension methods.
• Delegates and Events.
• Anonymous methods and Lambda expressions.