Visual Basic Interview Questions & Answers

[Kalyan]

Visual Basic Interview Questions & Answers

What are the three main differences between flexgrid control and dbgrid(Data bound Grid) control?

The Microsoft FlexGrid (MSFlexGrid) control displays and operates on tabular data. It allows complete flexibility to sort, merge, and format tables containing strings and pictures. When bound to a Data control, MSFlexGrid displays read-only data.Adaptation to existing Visual Basic code for the data-bound grid (DBGrid).
dbgrid is A spreadsheet-like bound control that displays a series of rows and columns representing records and fields from a Recordset object.

The data grids are bound controls; that is, they require a data source that actually connects to a database and retrieves their data. And it seems that the root of the problem with DBGrid is that there's no data source that can be readily included along with the DBGrid control.

In Visual Basic, the solution is simply to include the Data Control on the same form as DBGrid. But the Data Control is an intrinsic control; it's unavailable to anything outside of the Visual Basic environment itself.

And VB 6.0 has a new set of data controls (DataGrid, DataList, DataCombo, MSHFlexGrid, MSFlexGrid) that once again are bound controls. Unlike DBGrid, though, they support OLE DB, and therefore rely on the an ADO Data Source (and in particular the ActiveX Data Objects Data Control, or ADO DC) for data access. Unlike the Data Control, the ADODC is a custom control (that is, an .OCX) that can be added to any project. In short, if you add ADO DC to your project along with the DataGrid control.

ActiveX and Types of ActiveX Components in VB ?

Standard EXE
ActiveX EXE
ActiveX DLL
ActiveX document
ActiveX Control

What is difference between inprocess and out of process ?

An in-process component is implemented as a DLL, and runs in the same process space as its client app, enabling the most efficient communication between client and component.Each client app that uses the component starts a new instance of it.

An out of process component is implemented as an EXE, and unlike a dll, runs in its own process space. As a result, exe's are slower then dll's
because communications between client and component must be marshalled across process boundaries. A single instance of an out of process component can service many clients.


Advantage of ActiveX Dll over Active Exe ?

ACTIVEX DLL:

An in-process component, or ActiveX DLL, runs in another application's process. In-process components are used by applications or other in-process components. this allows you to wrap up common functionality (like an ActiveX Exe).

ACTIVEX EXE:

An out-of-process component, or ActiveX EXE, runs in its own address space. The client is usually an application running in another process.The code running in an ActiveX Exe is running in a separate process space. You would usually use this in N-Tier programming.

An ActiveX EXE runs out of process while an ActiveX DLL runs in the same process space as VB app. Also, and ActiveX EXE can be run independent of your application if desired.

Explain single thread and multithread thread apartments?

All components created with Visual Basic use the apartment model, whether they're single-threaded or multithreaded. A single-threaded component has only one apartment, which contains all the objects the component provides.

This means that a single-threaded DLL created with Visual Basic is safe to use with a multithreaded client. However, there's a performance trade-off for this safety. Calls from all client threads except one are marshaled, just as if they were out-of-process calls.

What is a Component?

If you compile an ActiveX dll, it becomes a component.
If you compile an ActiveX Control, it becomes both a component and a control. Component is a general term used to describe code that's grouped by functionality. More specifically, a component in COM terms is a compiled collection of properties/methods and events.

Typically a component is loaded into your project via the References whereas an ActiveX Control is loaded into your project via "components".


What is meant by "Early Binding" and "Late Binding"? Which is better?

Early binding and late binding refer to the method used to bind an interface's properties and methods to an object reference (variable). Early binding uses type library information at design time to reference procedures, while late binding handles this at run time. Late binding
handles this by interrogating the reference before each call to insure that it supports a particular method. Since every call to a late bound
object actually requires two calls.