InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
January 12, 1998
Web Ability For Visual Basic
Add-ons integrate browser programming commands into VB5 languageBy Rich Levin
The product, reportedly called Web Classes for VB, will integrate browser programming commands into the VB language, according to enterprise developers briefed by Microsoft. A Microsoft official declined to comment on the plans.
"The extensions are class modules for Web interaction," says a developer. "If you want to build Web solutions entirely in Visual Basic, this is the facility for doing that." The class modules will receive HTTP requests directly from a browser and send them off to VB for processing. "It's very fast and as powerful as Active Server Pages-maybe even more powerful," says the
developer.
Developers say VB5 is in desperate need of better direct Web connectivity. "We build browser-independent applications off-line," says Curt Hertler, a technical specialist with BP Oil Co. in Warrensville Heights, Ohio. "We then move them to the Web, because that's the only way we can make it work with VB." The integrated Web classes within VB5 will be extremely helpful, he says.
The VB Web classes may be unveiled as early as Jan. 26 at Microsoft's Web Tech Ed developer conference in Palm Springs, Calif. But some sources who attended Microsoft's briefing say the classes are far from functionally complete.
"The demos Microsoft built were very simplistic," says an IT developer in a large enterprise VB shop who is skeptical of the technology's benefit. "What we saw wasn't compelling, and it took pages and pages of VB code. I was sitting there thinking, `Why is this better than Active Server Pages?'"
icrosoft may release as early as this month extensions to Visual Basic 5.0 that will let developers build Web applications without requiring additional products such as Microsoft's Visual InterDev, Active Server Pages and VBScript.
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