What software you need
Software option #1: Full editions of
Visual Studio 2005
To develop database applications using Visual Basic
2005, you can use any of the full editions of Visual
Studio 2005, including the Standard Edition, Professional
Edition, or Team System. All of these come with everything
you need, including the Visual Studio development environment,
version 2.0 of the Microsoft .NET Framework, Visual
Basic 2005 (and C# 2005), a built-in web server for
testing ASP.NET applications, and a scaled-back version
of SQL Server called SQL Server 2005 Express for database
handling.
Software option #2: Free editions of
Visual Studio components
You can also download three Express editions of Visual
Studio components from Microsoft's web site:
- Visual Basic 2005 Express
- Visual Web Developer 2005 Express
- SQL Server 2005 Express
All of these products are free. And together, they
provide most of the components you need to develop the
applications for this book. The only exception is Crystal
Reports, so you'll need one of the full editions to develop the applications in chapter 20.
Beyond that, please remember that the Express editions are
scaled-back versions of the full editions. So
you'll find that some of their user interfaces are simpler
than the ones in our book, which are all based on the
Professional Edition.
Nevertheless, these are terrific products for gaining
ADO.NET 2.0 database programming skills. And both the
applications and skills that you develop will work with
any of the full editions of Visual Studio 2005.
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