ADO.NET Programmer's Reference [Paperback]

Adil Rehan (Author), Dushan Bilbija (Author), Fabio Claudio Ferracchiati (Author), Jeffrey Hasan (Author), John McTanish (Author), Jon Reid (Author), Matthew Milner (Author), Naveen Kohli (Author), Paul Dickinson (Author), Jan Narkiewicz (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 2001

ADO.NET is Microsoft's latest data access technology, and, as an integral component of the .NET framework, is far more than simply an upgrade of an existing technology. ADO.NET is a large set of .NET classes that enable us to interact with data sources, manipulate data, and communicate with other applications and Web Services in entirely new ways.

This book provides a wealth of information about the ADO.NET. We describe the features and how to use them, as well as providing advice and explanation that will enable you to use ADO.NET effectively. The code examples are concise, and demonstrate how to use a specific techniques rather than how to build entire applications.

This book covers:

An overview of ADO.NET, including differences to ADO and its new class structure

How to access and query databases using ADO.NET

The DataSet, DataReader and DataAdapter objects

How to implement transactions in ADO.NET

XML support

Working with database permissions

Incorporating classic ADO components in .NET applications

Real-world programming tasks using the SQL Client, OLEDB and ODBC providers

Extensive reference sections

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you're planning to write applications for Microsoft's .NET framework and want to work with Extensible Markup Language (XML) or otherwise provide access to databases within the .NET architecture, you need to understand ADO.NET. While ADO.NET Programmer's Reference isn't meant as a tutorial, it's far more than an object reference. True, you can use it to discover the members of the many ADO.NET classes, but that's not too valuable when your development environment provides that information. More useful is this book's extensive collection of commentary and examples. If you're interested in--to cite one example of the hundreds in this volume--the Fill method of the DataAdapter object, you'll find two pages of prose explanation on how Fill behaves in different situations (including potentially weird ones, like when column names conflict). Following those two explanatory pages, 10 pages of parameter documentation, code samples, and further commentary provide lots of details, increasing the likelihood that you'll find what you need.

Helpfully, the authors have taken care to include code samples in both C# and VB.NET, though once in a while a snippet appears without adequate commentary in either code comments or nearby prose. A potentially bigger problem is that the authors worked from a late preliminary version of the ADO.NET, which introduces the possibility that not all of their advice will work under the gold version. Still, this book does good work as an aid to programmers under pressure to produce well-constructed ADO.NET applications. --David Wall

Topics covered: The design and implementation of the ADO.NET environment, in the form of a class reference with lots of commentary and examples. Object representations of data, as well as of transactions, permissions, and queries, are all covered with respect to C# and VB.NET. Providers covered include OLE DB, ODBC, and Microsoft SQL Server 2000.

From the Publisher

This book is aimed at experienced developers, who have some experience of ASP or general development with Microsoft technologies, or experience of programming within the .NET framework. It is not aimed at beginners and does not cover general programming techniques or the basics of programming languages.

Primarily, it is intended as a reference for .NET developers who are utilizing the ADO.NET classes in their applications.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 950 pages
• Publisher: Wrox Press; 1st edition (September 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 186100558X
• ISBN-13: 978-1861005588
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.5 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,506,428 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent reference, November 3, 2001

By 

BOB BRADSHAW (Redwood City, California United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: ADO.NET Programmer's Reference (Paperback)

Many reference books are little more than laundry lists of methods, namespaces, etc. This book does an excellent job of explaining what it covers. It has many good code examples that follow its explanations. For anyone who already has gone through an introductory book on ASP.NET, and who has any background in classic ASP, this book should be a welcome addition. It goes into detail on many additional topics that you don't find in many introductory .NET books, for example Transactional processing. Most books give cursory glances at transactional processing and data relations. This book dives into these topics. For serious programmers who want to get beyond the basics of ADO.NET programming, this book is worth the money, and the time that you will spend on it. This is the best book, at the moment, on ADO.NET programming, either as a reference or as a tutorial.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent as a reference, May 24, 2002

By 

Thomas Paul (Plainview, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: ADO.NET Programmer's Reference (Paperback)

Wrox lists this book as a "Programmer's Reference". In a reference I look for detailed information and code samples demonstrating usage all of which should be more extensive than what can be found in the help files or online API. This book succeeds very well as a reference providing a great deal of information that you will want to have nearby while you are coding. The book starts off with a description of ADO.NET which I found to be the weakest part of the book. This section doesn't quite put all the pieces of ADO.NET together in a meaningful way. The remainder of the book is excellent. Each of the key ADO.NET classes (DataSet, DataReader, DataAdapter, etc.) and their constructors, properties, methods and events are discussed in detail with code samples in both VB.NET and C#. Each key class or concept (data relationships, transactions, XML mapping, etc.) is given a chapter in the book. The explanations are much more useful that what you will find in the online help files. Besides covering SQL and OLE, the book also covers the ODBC classes which are not documented in the help files included with VS.NET. In a reference the index is important and here the index is good although some entries seem to be off a page or two. If you are looking for an in-depth introduction to using ADO.NET you will want to look at other books. If you need a detailed reference book then this should be your first stop.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Reference, December 18, 2001

By 

Bassam Muhammad (Alexandria) - See all my reviews

This review is from: ADO.NET Programmer's Reference (Paperback)

As a reference book, I can say its excellent, it gives very good examples of nearly every method and property for the subject, of course it needs experience with ADO, its not for new developers need to learn ADO.NET , also it doesn't teach general preferred or strategic ways of doing things, it's a REFERENCE like the book name reflects, and its an excellent reference in one book.

Bassam