The Philosophy of .NET

• Understand the motivation behind the .NET platform
• Know the role of the Common Type System (CTS)
• Know the role of the Common Language Specification (CLS)
• Know the role of the Common Language Runtime (CLR)
• Understand the assembly, namespace, type distinction
• Contrast single-file and multi-file assemblies
• Know the role of the Common Intermediate Language (CIL)
• Survey the .NET Namespaces
• Platform independent .NET (Mono / Portable .NET distributions)
• Choosing a managed language (C#, VB, MC++)
• Developing with the C# command line compiler (csc.exe)
• Developing with Visual Studio 2008

Introducing the C# Programming Language

• The role of the Main() method
• Processing command line arguments
• Defining class types using C#
• Examine looping and decision constructs
• Understanding method overloading
• C# parameter modifiers (out, ref, params)
• Working with structured exception handling
• Building custom exception objects

Object Oriented Programming with C#

• The role of constructors and finalizers
• Encapsulation and C# property syntax
• Static fields, members and constructors
• The const and read only modifiers
• Implementation inheritance and virtual members
• Abstract base classes / abstract members
• Interface based polymorphism
• Explicit interface implementation
• Rules of type casting
• The role of nested types

Common Language Runtime Fundamentals

• Understanding value types and reference types
• The role of System.Object
• Understanding boxing and unboxing
• Arrays and the System.Array class
• Working with textual data
• The role of System.Enum
• Building custom namespaces
• Understanding .NET delegate types
• The delegate / event relationship

Advanced C# Language Features

• Designing partial types
• Static class definitions
• C# nullable types (and the ? and ?? operators)
• Delegate Covariance and Contravariance
• Understanding Anonymous Methods
• Understanding Method Group Conversion

Working with .NET Generics

• The motivation behind generics
• The System.Collections.Generic namespace
• Building custom generic members
• Building custom generic types
• Constraining type parameters

Understanding .NET Assemblies

• Assembly characteristics
• Contrasting private and shared assemblies
• Deploying and configuring private assemblies
• Cross language inheritance
• Understanding the role of strong names
• Deploying and configuring shared assemblies
• Understand publisher policy assemblies
• Working with codebase

Desktop Development using Windows Forms

• The Visual Studio Windows Forms designers
• Understand the role of the Application class
• Examine the derivation of the Form class
• Survey of the Windows Forms control set
• Handle keyboard events in a desktop application
• Handle mouse events in a desktop application
• Graphical rendering using GDI+ (System.Drawing)
• Construct dialog boxes
• Understand form inheritance

Reflection and Attribute Based Programming

• The role of reflection and System.Type
• Dynamic loading of external assemblies
• The role of late binding
• Understanding attribute based programming
• Building custom attributes
• Building extendable software

Input, Output and Object Serialization

• Survey the System.IO namespace
• Learn to manipulate a directory and file structure
• Open, read, write and close text files
• The role of object serialization
• The BinaryFormatter / SoapFormatter types

Data Access with ADO.NET

• Understand the ADO.NET object model
• Working with DataReaders
• Working with Command types
• Build parameterized queries
• Invoke stored procedures using ADO.NET
• Work with DataSets and DataAdapters
• Understand DataRelation types
• Work with DataView types

Advanced ADO.NET Topics

• The data provider factory pattern
• Reading configuration data from App.config
• Working with connection string builder objects
• Using DataTables as DataReaders

Web Development with ASP.NET

• Examine the architecture of an ASP.NET Web Application
• Survey the ASP.NET namespaces
• The ASP.NET development server and IIS
• The single file and code file development models
• Understand the role of the Page type
• A survey of ASP.NET Web Controls
• Interacting with the request / response
• Working with session and application data