Introduction

To rapidly build enterprise Web applications, developers must rely on business logic that is scalable, robust, and reusable. Over the past several years, object oriented programming has emerged as the primary methodology for building systems that meet these requirements. Using object oriented programming languages helps make large-scale systems easier to understand, simpler to debug, and faster to update.

While Visual Basic® has set the standard for rapid development of Windows applications, the lack of object-oriented language features has limited its acceptance for creating middle-tier components. To address this issue, the next generation of Visual Basic will add object-oriented language features to simplify the development of enterprise Web applications. With these new language features, Visual Basic will deliver all the power of C++ or Java while maintaining the instant accessibility that has made it the world's most popular development tool.