Visual Basic 2005 in a Nutshell, Third Edition

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Chapter 2: The .NET Framework: General Concepts

This is the Title of the Book, eMatter Edition

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namespaces within System. The namespaces supplied with .NET provide basic

system services, such as:

• Basic and advanced data types and exception handling (the System

namespace)

• Data access (the System.Data namespace)

• User-interface elements for standard Windows applications (the System.Win-

dows.Forms namespace)

• User-interface elements for web applications (the System.Web.UI namespace)

Many Visual Basic language features are implemented within the classes of the

Microsoft.VisualBasic namespace. (The C# and J# languages have corresponding

namespaces.)

All classes (and other types) exist in a namespace, even the classes of your applica-

tion. By default, your project’s namespace is at the top of the hierarchy (next to

System) and is named after your project’s name. You can alter this by using the

Namespace statement at the beginning of a code file, or by defining a different

project namespace through the Project Properties.

Types and Objects

Pretty much everything in a .NET application is contained in a type. Types

include:

• Classes, which are basically collections of data values, and the related code

that manages that data. Usually a class has both data and code, but a particu-

lar class might just have either data or code. In Visual ...