Visual Basic Object and Component Handbook (Prentice Hall series on Microsoft technologies) [Paperback]

I am a VB programmer with about 1 1/2 years of experience. I started off with a basic VB book, moved on to using VB with databases, and it was at this point I started realizing how important objects were. I needed to separate my client projects from much of the code behind the scenes and put that code in to Active DLL's or EXE's so many different client projects could access it over many different methods (desktop, distributed over our network, or through the Internet). I mean that's the power of VB! I bought "VB COM" by Wrox and while it taught me some things, it was really just an overview. I also bought "VB Beginning Objects" by Smiley but it was too basic and written more like a 700-page novel. They both had decent examples of objects at work, but neither of those books were good references. I guess the best way to describe my situation after reading these two books was that I knew what objects were, I knew the basics of programming them, and yet I still couldn't apply what I learned to the current stuff I was working on at my job. That's when I knew I needed more.

Along comes this book and I now feel like I am a full fledged VB object programmer. There's none of this "Here's how you write a Select Case within an object"... the author cuts right to the chase starting at Chapter 1, page 1. Within the first five pages, I already had the author discuss some of the main issues I was concerned and thinking about-- ie, "It seems the more flexible you want to make your object methods, the more parameters you have to pass to them." I was impressed. Already something I was thinking about in my current project.

There are 16 chapters covered, beginning chapters on designing, coding the objects, and COM interfaces, advanced chapters on COM Add-In's To ActiveX Objects, Deploying to ActiveX Documents. There's a great chance that if a certain topic involves objects, this book has at least a mention of that topic. This has been the best programming book I've bought in awhile and I will without a doubt explore more books by this publisher and author.

I have long been wondering if I was making the correct design decisions and looking for a book that outlines the alternatives that can be implemented to develop enterprise solutions that perform well and are maintainable!

After the specifics of general object and component writing, there are specific chapters that target ActiveX Controls, adding Data Binding behavior of your objects, MTS components, and much, much more (read the table of contents). These chapters are written to be practical guides to the implementation of these specific technologies with clear, concise languange and examples! While the W2K and COM+ coverage is light, it outlines some of the items that warrant further investigation on your own.

This book sure to be one of the most often used reference books in my library on VB. I recommend it highly to anyone asking about object/component design and development and I highly recommend it to you now.