Visual Basic 6 Application Development

The code examples and case study in this book require that you have the following software installed on a computer using the Windows NT 4 (SP4 or greater) or Windows 2000 operating systems. In summary the software requirements are:

Windows NT 4:

• Visual Basic 6 (SP3 recommended)

• SQL Server 7.0 (SP1 recommended)

• ADO 2.1 or ADO 2.5

• MTS 2.0 (Microsoft Transaction Server)

Windows 2000:

• Visual Basic 6 (SP3 recommended)

• SQL Server 7.0 (SP1 recommended)

• ADO 2.5

• COM+ Services

Operating System Requirements

Although the code examples and case study can be run on a computer running the Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows 98 Second Edition operating systems, we strongly recommend the use of Windows NT 4 or Windows 2000 due to the reduced component functionality and lack of security in the Windows 9x series of operating systems. The illustrations and examples in this book were created on computers running Windows NT 4 and Windows 2000, although we mention how to accomplish the required tasks in Windows 9x where differences are present. No software changes are necessary if you use the Windows 2000 or Windows NT 4 operating systems.

Visual Basic Versions

The version of Visual Basic 6 we're using is the Enterprise Edition, although the Professional Edition may also be used. The Professional Edition lacks tools such as Visual Modeler, however, so some features or add-ins that the book uses may not be present if the Professional Edition is used. If tools are included only in the Enterprise Edition, we indicate this when they're discussed.

ActiveX Data Objects Code Libraries

The code examples will run with either version of ADO (ActiveX Data Objects); if you have ADO 2.5 installed instead of ADO 2.1 in either Windows NT 4 or Windows 2000, only a change to the project references from ADO 2.1 to ADO 2.5 is necessary.

ADO is Microsoft's preferred high-level data interface to data stores. It provides a reasonably easy to use object model that's easier to work with than lower level interfaces such as ODBC (Open DataBase Connectivity). Since this book works with Microsoft technologies, we'll use ADO exclusively for accessing the WROBA data in an SQL Server 7.0 database.

ADO is available as a Tools installation with VB, is installed by Office 2000, and is available for download at the Microsoft Universal Data Access (UDA) Web site.

MTS and COM+

Database transactions are handled by Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS), which is an operating system component that is available as part of the Windows NT Option Pack installation. COM+ is a replacement for MTS in Windows 2000, and is automatically loaded as part of the Windows installation. A more limited version of MTS is available for the Windows 9x series of operating systems, and can be loaded from the VB 6 Enterprise Edition disks, the Windows NT 4 Option Pack, or can be downloaded from the Microsoft web site. The Windows NT 4 Option Pack contains a version of MTS that can be used by the Windows 9x series of operating systems, in addition to the version for Windows NT.

The Option Pack may be used to install MTS 2.0 in Windows NT or in Windows 9x and we discuss the installation and configuration of this product in Appendix B.

SQL Server

A free, 120 day evaluation version of SQL Server 7.0 may be downloaded from the Microsoft MSDN web site. A SQL Server 7.0 evaluation version CD can also be ordered at the same web site. Visual Basic 6 Enterprise Edition also includes a version of SQL Server 7.0 that can be used.