Session 3

Last Monday we started working through Chapter 7: Creating Web Applications.
* When you open a new website the basic metadata and html are already in place.
* The .aspx file extension refers to active server pages.
* The top line of the code tells the web page where all the dynamic code is.
* There are 3 possible views: Design (preview page), Split and Source (code only).
* In Solution Explorer the .aspx.vb file is where our VB code will go.
* When you run a Web Application for the first time an error message pops up - leave it as default and click on OK.
* When you run the program it mocks up the webpage in IE, and when you look at the source code extra code has been added in. This comes from the web.config file which never leaves the server.
* It is an excellent place to store sensitive information.
* It is written in XML which is a hierarchy of nodes not code and is written in plain English which makes it the transmission format of choice.

Session 2

At the start of session 2 we talked a little bit about Do loops.
* There are 2 types of Do loops - Do Until and Do While.
* Each of these can be either Top Controlled or Bottom Controlled, e.g.
TOP Controlled:
Do Until 1 To 10
'Body
Next
BOTTOM Controlled:
Do
'Body
Loop Until x = 10
* After this we worked through the Chapter 6 project - the Highway Radar Checkpoint program.

Semester 2 Begins.

Little bit slow at getting some posts up this semester - sorry.

Session 1 was spent mostly doing some revision of what we learned last semester, such as:
* Declaring and assigning variables
* Variable types e.g. string, char, integer, decimal, date, boolean
* Scope and lifetime of variables
* The concatenation operator &
* Using the MessageBox show method
* The difference between procedures and functions
* Decision structures - If statements and Selected Case statements
* The SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle)
* Class Diagrams
* Arrays
* Loops: For ... Next loops (when you DO know the number of loops to be executed) and Do loops (when you DO NOT know the number of loops to be executed)

End of programming for Semester 1.

Having sat the Chapter 6 Test today and handed in the Alarm Clock assignment last week, that is the end of the programming course requirements for this semester! As this means I probably won't be using Visual Basic for the next seven weeks ... I hope I don't forget everything I have learnt so far!!

Chapter 6 Test - again!

In the Multiple Choice part, question 12 and 13, just wondering if anyone can help. As I understand it from the book, when you have a For ... Next loop that runs from 1 To 4 the loop will run 4 times and stop when it gets to 5. Therefore, in question 12 when the values are 1 To 25 with a Step of 3, that would be 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22 and 25 - hence looping 9 times ... but when we ran that code in VB it seemed to stop at 25 therefore only running 8 times. Does that make sense? So basically, do people think the answer to number 12 is 8 or 9, and along the same lines in the answer to number 13 3 or 4?? Can anyone help???

Chapter 6 Test.

Quick question for anyone who's looked over the test paper. Where it says Visual Studio 2005 in a couple of the questions, I am assuming that we should just read it as 2008 and that it's not a trick question??

BLOG TASK: What other methods are available when using Now?

I found 40 alternative methods (other than AddMinutes) available when using Now:

Add; AddDays; AddHours; AddMilliseconds; AddMonths; AddSeconds; AddTicks; AddYears; Compare; CompareTo; DaysInMonth; Equals; FromBinary; FromFileTime; FromFileTimeUtc; FromOADate; GetDateTimeFormats; GetHashCode; GetType; GetTypeCode; IsDaylightSavingTime; IsLeapYear; Parse; ParseExact; ReferenceEquals; SpecifyKind; Subtract; ToBinary; ToFileName; ToFileNameUtc; ToLocalTime; ToLongDateString; ToLongTimeString; ToOADate; ToShortDateString; ToShortTimeString; ToString; ToUniversalTime; TryParse; TryParseExact.