What is Visual Basic?
A type of object-oriented, event driven programming language and environment developed by Microsoft for the Windows operating system. Visual Basic allows programmers to create applications quickly by writing code to accompany onscreen objects such as buttons and windows. GUI is used to drag and drop components to the forms, and this reduces the developing time. It is derived heavily from BASIC. VB enables Rapid Application Development (RAD) of graphical user interface (GUI) applications, easy access to databases using DAO, RDO, or ADO, and easy creation of ActiveX controls.
A programmer can quickly put together an application using the components provided with Visual Basic itself. Programs written in Visual Basic can also use the Windows API, but doing so requires external function declarations. As of today Visual Basic has the largest user base, primarily because of its simplicity.
Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is included in many Microsoft applications (Microsoft Office), and also in several third-party products like WordPerfect Office 2002 and ESRI ArcGIS.