The unbound and bound approach in Visual Basic

Visual Basic.Net has two approaches in dealing to work with ADO.NET. The unbound or traditional approach and bound or databinding approach. In previous version of Visual Basic, programmers works to write more lines of code to achieve what they really wanted to happen in their programs. Nevertheless, they hard code all source code to be written to attain the overall functionality and capability of an entire program. That’s how it works the previous version of Visual Basic. Fortunately, Microsoft has developed new features what we called Visual Basic.Net the new evolution of Visual Basic and purely work as fully Object Oriented Programming Language that runs in a native platform called Microsoft .Net Framework. The .Net Framework is one of most important part of Visual Basic.Net Language because this language rely on its Framework to run Visual Basic.Net components and sets of objects. However, .Net Framework has a version over a year and Visual Basic.Net runs depends on its Framework version. In addition, when you’re using new version of .Net in saving your program and open it in old version of .Net for modification perhaps other components of your program will crash or cannot be open it because other components might not available in old version that new version has. Example in Visual Studio 2008, the Crystal Report is Visible in toolbox while in Visual Studio 2010 is not visible on toolbox (see related articles in Crystal Report not Visible in Toolbox).  The main reason why this language was evolved because programmer’s now can create less amount of code to write data driven application quickly, all are objects, and it allows you to manage while writing the codes, and most of all the code are reusable. Why is it reusable? In Visual Basic.Net, programmers tends to write a class that encapsulates and inherit other classes on its behavior and used it if needed. There’s a lot can work with an objects and different approach can be apply (see related articles in Object Oriented Programming). One good thing about VB.NET is the use of IntelliSense, IntelliSense displays a list of the properties and methods that might be trying to select. As you type more of the property and method, IntelliSense scrolls to show the choices that match what you have typed. For example, if you are going to type MessageBox., what will happen after you typed MessageBox? The .(dot) is a namespace sets of objects, when you type s the possible word appears are Show or ShowDialog. That’s how powerful intellisense works especially in the side of programmers because it’s already there all the clue and options how to manipulate the code in order to use it properly.

The advantages and disadvantages of Databinding

The unbound and bound approach has their own advantages and disadvantages how it works. In unbound, more optimized code can be written by using the unbound or traditional methods, more lines of code needs to achieve the overall program to be fully completed,  and complete flexibility can only be achieved by using the unbound approach, this are among disadvantages. In bound or binding, you don’t need to waste writing more lines of code, instead the Wizards associated with Windows Forms write the necessary ADO.NET code for you, control over the Databinding process by using events, and you can create quick application in less code with fast execution but still get the work done in the best way.