.NET pages

These pages are dedicated to .NET. They originally started as a number of papers on exploring .NET as seen in a Delphi perspective. Over time .NET has become a world on itself and Borland has picked up the .NET path as well. I will not treat the latter, only COM interop as a means of communication between classical Delphi and the .NET world. I will use the C# language as this language is easy to understand for Delphi people and Visual Studio .NET as an IDE which is easy to understand for Delphi (and other) developers. A basic knowledge of object orientation is sufficient to understand all material.

After an introducing .NET from a Delphi perspective I will roughly compare the .NET/C# couple to the VCL/Delphi couple. Having laid a groundwork I will dive into pure .NET. There is far to much there to cover everything, I will pick up whatever comes by. In a series of papers I will emphasize on interoperability between .NET, Delphi and other "legacy" code. This is realized using XML and COM, the latter is based on my material on Delphi and automation.

To learn more about .NET you need a good book. The number of books is overwhelming, I will introduce the ones that are in my view essential. On CodeBetter I run a weblog to publish a diversity of tips, tricks, tidbits and irrelevant chatter. I am a contributor to the dotnetjunkies community web site and the site of the Dutch SDN. Articles hosted on these sites are marked as such. Some of the articles require registration to be viewed, registration is always free.

.NET from a Delphi perspective

Introducing .NET
Comparing features of C#/Delphi and .NET/VCL Where does your Delphi knowledge fit in ?

XML and ADO.NET (from a Delphi perpesctive)

Data in .NET, it's all about XML. An object oriented introduction to XML serialization and ADO.NET (sdn)
Datasets and Objectdatasources. A preview on .NET 2.0 style. (sdn)
Data in .NET. Similarities and dissimilarities between the Delphi and .NET data classes.
Working with .NET data in Delphi.
Creating a Delphi Component wrapper for a .NET XML dataset.
Inside the tDNdataset class.

ASP.NET architecture

Users, Sessions, Applications and Queues: Peaking the Architecture of an ASP.NET Application (dnj)

ASP.NET webforms

The datagrid revisited:Editing a live database in template columns Working with the datagrid component. (dnj)
Taking Full Control: Build Your Own Reusable Datalist with VS.NET. Creating a custom datalist component. (dnj)
User controls and other useful things. Building a real-world web applications (dnj)

ASP.NET web services

Building RADical Web Services with VS.NET. Use an An XML web service to interface to a database. (dnj)
Passing data in and out of web services using (typed) xml (-datasets).
The Message is the Medium - Invoking a XML Web Service (dnj)
Building a real-life web-experience : Don�t trip over the threads (dnj)

Tablet PC

Tablet PC : mobile and powerfull. An introduction to the the tablet PC and it's SDK. (sdn)

COM interop in .NET

Using automation in C# An introduction to using connectable automation objects in C#.
Using automation (ActiveX/COM) objects in ASP.NET. dnj
Building an automation server using C# Building automation servers in C# using the Gekko class library.
Demo application A C# automation client and a C# automation server.
The full story A big story which starts from scratch and ends with a full C# connectable COM server being used by MS-Word. Covers a lot of details of object oriented programming in .NET.
Communicatie in plaats van migratie Delphi app and .NET app communicating via COM (In Dutch !) (sdn)

Miscellaneous

Creating a .net library
Dynamic events on an ASP.NET Page. Working with eventhandlers in asp.net. (dnj)
Threading Use a multithreaded Windows form to investigate threads in .NET.
Building a Windows service to check email (sdn)
Smart apps voor smart devices met VS.NET 2003 (In Dutch !) (sdn)
De PDC: let's code. (Foto-) verslag van de PDC 2003. (In Dutch !) (sdn)
The source of all evil, over de variabelen in je code. (In Dutch !) (sdn)
Architectuur voor de ambachtsman. Overpeinzingen over software-ontwikkeling (In Dutch !) (sdn)

Learning .NET (Book reviews)

A programmers' introduction to C# by Eric Gunnerson. An excellent jumpstart on programming C# which keeps its value as a reference guide.
Inside C# by Tom Archer. A very good book to learn the C# programming language which does include a lot of technical background.
If you want to know more about the internals of the framework read Applied Microsoft .NET Framework Programming by Jeffrey Richter.
To understand how ASP.NET works and how you can build on this framework read Developing Microsoft ASP.NET server controls and components
XML is everywhere in .NET. Applied XML programming for Microsoft .NET covers covers a lot of aspects of using XML to build real-life applications, .net style.
For a very thorough coverage of XML you should read XML for ASP.NET developers.

DNJ : This article is a on the site of the dotnetjunkies as a part of my contributions to their tutorials.
SDN : This article is in Dutch and on the site of the SDN.