My goal in writing this book is to provide readers with the information needed to understand how one goes about architecting an object oriented programming solution aimed at solving a business problem."

As you work your way through An Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming with Visual Basic .NET, you will first take a look at how to analyze the business requirements of an application. Next, you will take a look at modeling the objects and relationships involved in the solution design. Finally, you will implement the solution using Visual Basic .NET. Along the way you will learn the fundamentals of software design, the Unified Modeling Language (UML), Object Oriented Programming (OOP), and Visual Basic .NET.

The target audience for this book is the beginning VB .NET programmer who wants to gain a foundation in OOP along with the VB language basics. Programmers transitioning from a procedural oriented programming model to an object oriented model will also benefit from this book. There are also a large number of pre- .NET VB programmers who do not have a firm grasp of OOP, now is the time to become acquainted with the fundamentals of OOP before transitioning to VB .NET. Because the experience level of a "beginner" can vary immensely, Dan Clark has also included a primer in Appendix A that discusses some fundamental procedural programming concepts.

An Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming with Visual Basic .NET is logically organized into three parts.

Part 1 is a look at object oriented programming methodology and design. These are concepts that transcend a particular programming language of OOP. The concepts presented here are important to the success of an object oriented programming solution regardless of the implementation language chosen. At the conclusion of this section a case study will be introduced and the design of a solution based on the case study will be demonstrated.

Part 2 is a look at how OOP is implemented in Visual Basic .NET. The author will explore the structure of objects and how classes are related to objects and look at class hierarchies, organization, and interaction. This is where readers will see how the general topics discussed in Part 1 are transformed into VB coding constructs.

Part 3 is a return to the case study introduced and modeled at the end of Part 1. Using the knowledge gained in Part 2, readers will transform the design into a fully functional VB .NET application. This will include a graphical user interface, implementation of the business logic and integration with a database for storing durable data.

Dan Clark is a Microsoft Certified Trainer, Microsoft Certified Solution Developer, and a Microsoft Certified Database Administrator. For the last seven years, he has been developing applications and training others how to develop applications using Microsoft technologies. Dan's training experience runs the gamut from training OOP beginners to training experienced developers on the nuances of COM programming. He finds particular satisfaction in turning new developers on to the thrill of developing and designing object-oriented applications.