Programming Microsoft® ADO.NET 2.0 Core Reference

List Price: $59.99 Discount Price: $2.94

Customer Reviews:

Absolutely superb [Posted on 2006-10-05]
I am a huge ADO.NET nut and David's first book was absolutely priceless. After his last book, he set a very high bar that was going to be hard to meet, yet that's exactly what he did.

Pros:

- He discusses every facet of the ADO.NET library and does it well
- He doesn't shy away from difficult topics and in particular, goes straight at them in his Advanced Update section
- Excellent flow
- Won't leave you hanging if you don't know the 1.x framework but doesn't bog itself down in it either.
- Stellar writing style. David is interesting and always keeps you wanting to read more. He's concise, to the point yet does both without ever leaving you wanting for more.

CONS
-Calling this a con is probably a bit unfair but if there's one thing I didn't like was the coverage to TableAdapters. This has nothing to do with Sceppa's coverage and everything to do with the objects themselves. Since I never use them I have a bias against them. With that said, I doubt you could do a Core Reference without covering them so this doesn't really count.

The specific areas that this book really does a great job in is Transactions, Advanced Updates and client side data manipulation. Items like the syntax for DataTable.Select are covered in such stellar detail there's probably no situation that you will be unprepared for. Transactions are another complex area and this section alone makes the book worth its price. Advanced updates are a must in any ADO.NET book and history repeated itself here.

Pure Gold plain and simple.

Breath of fresh air [Posted on 2007-01-06]
I normally buy Wrox books and up until .NET I was very happy with them, but their .NET books (ASP.NET 2.0 and VB.NET particularly) were poorly organized with massive numbers of errors in them. I wanted an ADO.NET book but the customer reviews of the Wrox title were poor so I kept looking and found this book that has much better reviews. I'd not bought a Microsoft Press book recently because I didn't like the last one I tried so this was an act of faith for me.

I have to say, thought, that this book is an order of magnitude better than the recent Wrox books I have bought. I don't know if the single author approach simply results in a better book or if the particular author (David Sceppa) can take the credit. Either way, I think Wrox needs to stop publishing books with multiple authors.

The problem with ADO.NET is that everything is intermingled and it's hard to discuss, say, DataSets without mentioning DataTables or DataAdapters. David (or someone) say down and very carefully figured out the sequence to explain stuff with the minimum of forward referencing. This means there are only a few unresolved references I have to hold in my brain at a time for which I am very grateful. On the down-side, this means there is some repetition as he discusses the same class relationship from different perspectives in different chapters. At first I found this annoying until I realized that this was actually making my life as the reader much easier.

I have yet to find a single error and the sample code in particalar seems to be error free which is in stark contrast to the Wrox .NET books. The samples themselves are compact and clean and writen in both VB and C# which is a handy way for a VB programmer like me to learn a little C# on the cheap. I certainly never found myself thinking 'The purpose of this sample is to add 10 unncecessary pages to this book' unlike other books *cough*XML Bible*cough*.

I'm only about one third of the way through right now but I am very impressed.

I really hope someone from Wrox reads this because I'd like the old Wrox back that published great technical books.

Awesome book - great detail [Posted on 2007-02-22]
This book does a great job at explaining each concept it covers. I started the book with many misconceptions of disconnected data and other ADO.NET items. The book has many great code examples that are kept short and to the point. I definitely recommend this book to my team and anyone else wanting a stronger understanding of how to effectively use ADO.NET. Some of the performance tips it provides will suprise you.

too difficult for me,  [Posted on 2007-10-24]
I want one that may tell me step by step. Obviously this one is not such a book. It is too professional and focused in details that make things longer than you expected. if you are a beginner you would better not buy this one.

An ADO Keeper [Posted on 2008-06-13]
It is not "ADO for Dummies" or a tedious quick tutorial. Have a working handle on either C# or VB going in because it's not going to explain it. There are no lengthy history lessons or idle chit-chat.

With that said, this is a fast pace process through ADO with examples in both languages. It neither glosses nor dwells but moves through what you need when you need it. It is well structured from getting started with hookups and data readers through heavy lifting with parameterization on multi and mixed providers at the end. Most everything else is in between including working offline, online, modification and return to database.

Physically doing the examples, in sequence, provides the tutorial and the opportunity to play what-if to soak it in. Each sections assumes you understand the previous. In the end, this will give you a working foundation. It's well indexed and makes a good reference text for the bookshelf after teaching the basics.

I've had this book over a year and is still one of my go-to's. Recommended...

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