Table of Contents
- About This Book
- Chapter 1: Application Design Concepts
- Chapter 2: Creating the User Interface
- Chapter 3: Creating COM DLLs with Visual Basic
- Chapter 4: Advanced COM Programming with Visual Basic 6.0
- Chapter 5: Introducing ActiveX Data Objects
- Chapter 6: Accessing Data with ActiveX Data Objects
- Chapter 7: Advanced Database Topics
- Chapter 8: Using Stored Procedures
- Chapter 9: Using Microsoft Transaction Server
- Chapter 10: Implementing Security in the Enterprise
- Chapter 11: Debugging and Error Handling
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Appendix A: Questions and Answers
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Appendix B: Creating ActiveX Controls
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Appendix C: Using the ADO Data Control
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Appendix D: Creating Internet Applications
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Appendix E: Preparing a Distributed Application for Deployment
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Glossary
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Index
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Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1: Application Design Concepts
The Solutions Design Model The Solutions Design Model provides a step-by-step strategy for designing business-oriented solutions driven by specific business needs. Often, these solutions require the implementation of computing systems. Computing systems provide the ability to:
- Store raw market data and processed information.
- Encapsulate the business rules into software.
- Change the rules to respond to a changing market quickly and easily.
- Automatically act upon the rules.
The Solutions Design Model ties together the Application, Team, and Process Models, and lets the information system staff allocate resources where they can produce the most value.
The information-system design process is evolutionary. A good analogy of software design is the design of a building. A building design has three phases: the first is an architect's sketches, the second is architectural plans, and the third is the addition of detail to the plans to adjust for the physical environment of the building. This last phase also includes gathering the technology and materials available to construct the building.
Phase 1: Conceptual Design The architect's initial sketches provide a view of the building that is aligned with the purpose of the building. This sketch may contain elements such as floor plans and cutaways. This phase of building design corresponds to the conceptual design for a software development project, which starts with understanding what the user really needs to do, and then expands to creating a clear set of objectives that capture this understanding.
Conceptual design facilitates complete and accurate requirements by involving business sponsors, users, managers, and constituencies. The goal of conceptual design is to determine the following:
- The problem
- The needs and technological capabilities of the business and users
- The desired, future state of the work
- Whether upgrading an existing solution is viable
Team members present scenarios to enhance understanding and express the problems and visions for the future state of the solution. The purpose of scenarios is to think of the solution in the business environment, and to answer the who, what, when, why, and how questions.
Much of conceptual design is an analysis activity that leads to determining which processes and activities will go into the new system, how the objectives of those processes and activities will be met, and what the user's experience of those activities will be.
Phase 2: Logical Design
The second phase in the architectural process combines the client's view with the architect's view and knowledge. The architect uses detailed drawings to communicate with contractors and other parties involved in the construction of the building. This phase corresponds to the logical design phase in a software development process, in which you lay out the structure of the solution and provide a basis for physical design.
Logical design activities are integrated directly with the resulting scenarios from conceptual design and provide the basis for physical design. Logical design describes the organization of the elements that make up the solution and how they interact. You assemble the elements for optimum efficiency, performance, and reuse.
Phase 3: Physical Design
The architect draws up the plans for the builder. These plans include details for construction activities, and even finer details for individual subcontractors. This phase corresponds to an application designer's physical design in the software development process. Physical design describes a solution in a way that allows developers to construct the solution. Physical design communicates the necessary details of the solution, including its organization, structure, technology, and the relationships between elements.
Software Requirements
In this course, you will be creating applications that deploy processes and data in a network environment. To communicate with Component Object Model (COM) servers (components), run stored procedures on a database server, manage your components, and develop and test your applications, you must install the software described in the following sections.
Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 Enterprise Edition
Visual Basic 6.0 is a member of the Visual Studio 6.0 Enterprise Edition tools suite. (You can also purchase the stand-alone version of Visual Basic 6.0 Enterprise Edition.) The Visual Basic 6.0 Enterprise Edition is designed for teams of developers creating distributed, high-performance client/server or Internet and intranet applications.
Visual Studio 6.0 Enterprise Edition includes a number of features for enterprise developers...
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