Customer Reviews

Advantage Database Server: A Developer's Guide

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I have software that uses the Advantage database and I needed ADS specific information to write a front end for customized data access. This book really delivered for me. The authors seem to have a real passion for ADS and, like most things in life, this results in a high-quality product.

There is concise but informative stuff about general database structure that quickly progresses on to ADS-specific structure and great ADO.NET information. I learned more about real life ADO.NET from this book than I did from trudging through Visual Studio's help.

It's one of those books that just left me feeling extremely good about my decision to buy.

The Advantage Database Server (ADS) is a relational database system now owned by Sybase. It's a rather interesting database in that it uses an ISAM (Indexed Sequential Access Method) structure rather than the now more traditional SQL structure. In my opinion it is a system suitable for applications that have outgrown Microsoft Access, but which do not need the full power (and complexity) of the big databases such as Oracle, DB2 or SQL Server.

This book is written by two ADS pros that have an almost missionary zeal in promoting ADS. Still they have done a pretty good job of describing the various ways of getting data into and out of ADS. This includes the ADS GUI, using QBuilder (like the MS Access QBE), and of course writing in SQL itself. The ADS SQL is more advanced than the Jet engine in Access incorporating things like logic that are not supported in Jet. Finally there is a section on using ADS with various languages such as PHP, Delphi, .NET and more.

All in all, this is a complete and well written book on ADS that gives a good introduction to ADS.

If you're looking for a definitive resource for Advantage, look no further. This book covers everything in great detail- with some very detailed examples.