IE 423 – Design of Decision Support Systems Visual Studio Introduction to VB.NET programming

Important Events

Keepin Up Read Pol and Ahuja – Chapter 10 – Visual Studio Pol and Ahuja – Chapters 11-13

DSS Application Programming Spreadsheets, Databases, etc. are tools to support decision making You still need a delivery systems Sometimes you can build a delivery system within a tool – like Access …but it often involves some programming

DSS Application Programming We will be using Visual Basic.NET Don’t worry about the.NET part yet VB programming model Object Oriented Programming Event-driven programming

DSS Application Programming Object Oriented Programming As oppose to ? Focus on objects as the major organizing principle for the software …rather than the procedure or algorithm as the organizing principle In part, it is about how you think about the program and its design

DSS Application Programming Object Oriented Programming Objects are things in the program Objects have attributes, usually called Properties  Properties have a name and one or more values  Values can change or be set by your program

DSS Application Programming Object Oriented Programming Objects have actions, called Methods  Methods are things that the object do,…  …or have done to them  Methods are components of objects Not independent

DSS Application Programming Event-driven Programming Events are things that can happen to objects In VB many events are predefined (click) …but you can define others Code (program code – the code that you are going to write) is associated with events

DSS Application Programming So, how do you start thinking about developing a program? What’s the “old” way?

DSS Application Programming What’s the “old” way? Procedural Programming What to do to start. What to do next …and next …and next if this or that …and next And wrap it up

DSS Application Programming Consider an exchange rate calculator Print “Welcome to the Exchange Rate Calculator” Get exchangerate !get todays rate Input “Enter amount in US Dollars”, amt foreignamt = amt * exchangerate Print amt, “in this foreign currency = “, foreignamt end

DSS Application Programming Previous slide is an example of procedural programming Why? Alternative – Object Oriented Programming  How is this different?

DSS Application Programming Procedural vs Object Oriented programming Product might be the same From a functional (I/0) standpoint, could you produce the same program either way? Two important differences Thinking Implementation

DSS Application Programming What are the objects in your problem and your design? Some problem specific Some are UI objects What are the properties of these objects? What should happen when events happen to these objects?

DSS Application Programming Note: your programming language must support object oriented, event-driven programming Visual Basic Visual C++ Visual C# C++ (object oriented)

DSS Application Programming Visual Studio A place to make movies? A place to make music videos? A type of apartment with big windows? IDE – Interactive Development Environment

DSS Application Programming Visual Studio IDE An environment to create and edit software …to run and test the software Has many, many tools to make software development easier  Controls (?)  Windows  Web  Servers Helps manage software development  Configuration management

DSS Application Programming Visual Studio IDE You can run your software in Visual Studio When it is finished and tested you can make a standalone software package

DSS Application Programming Visual Studio IDE Mostly for MicroSoft Development products