Что обозначает DIM в Visual Basic и ОСНОВНОЙ?

public class RequestHandler {

    public String sendPostRequest(String requestURL,
                                  HashMap<String, String> postDataParams) {

        URL url;

        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        try {
            url = new URL(requestURL);

            HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
            conn.setReadTimeout(15000);
            conn.setConnectTimeout(15000);
            conn.setRequestMethod("POST");
            conn.setDoInput(true);
            conn.setDoOutput(true);


            OutputStream os = conn.getOutputStream();
            BufferedWriter writer = new BufferedWriter(
                    new OutputStreamWriter(os, "UTF-8"));
            writer.write(getPostDataString(postDataParams));

            writer.flush();
            writer.close();
            os.close();
            int responseCode = conn.getResponseCode();

            if (responseCode == HttpsURLConnection.HTTP_OK) {
                BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(conn.getInputStream()));
                sb = new StringBuilder();
                String response;
                while ((response = br.readLine()) != null){
                    sb.append(response);
                }
            }

        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        return sb.toString();
    }

    private String getPostDataString(HashMap<String, String> params) throws UnsupportedEncodingException {
        StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder();
        boolean first = true;
        for (Map.Entry<String, String> entry : params.entrySet()) {
            if (first)
                first = false;
            else
                result.append("&");

            result.append(URLEncoder.encode(entry.getKey(), "UTF-8"));
            result.append("=");
            result.append(URLEncoder.encode(entry.getValue(), "UTF-8"));
        }

        return result.toString();
    }

}