Beginning ASP.NET Databases using VB.NET [Illustrated] [Paperback]

John Kauffman (Author), Kent Tegel (Author), Brian Matsik (Author), Jan Narkewicz (Author), Fabio Claudio Ferracchiati (Author), Eric N. Mintz (Author), Donald Xie (Author), Jesudas Chinnathanpi (Author), John West (Author), James Greednwood (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 2002 | Series: Programmer to Programmer

For a web site to offer its users an experience that improves on that of newspapers or textbooks, it needs a way to change the information it contains dynamically - and that means it needs access to a data source. Through the combination of ASP.NET and ADO.NET, Microsoft provides everything necessary to access, read from, and write to a database, and then allow web users to view and manipulate that data from a web browser. In this book, we'll show you how it's done.

Packed with clear explanations and hands-on examples, Beginning ASP.NET Databases contains everything you'll need on your journey to becoming a confident, successful programmer of data-driven web sites. In particular, we'll look at:

* Connecting to common data sources, including SQL Server and MS Access

* Reading data with data reader and dataset objects

* Creating and deleting records, and editing data

* Displaying data with ASP.NET's web server controls

* Writing and using stored procedures from VB.NET code

* Placing your data access code in reusable class libraries

The book closes with a real-world case study that consolidates the tutorials throughout the book into a practical result.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

This book is for people who have some experience of programming ASP.NET with Visual Basic .NET, are familiar with the operation of the .NET Framework, and want to learn how to use ASP.NET to make data-centric web applications. No prior knowledge of database programming is necessary.

From the Back Cover

What you need to know

This book is for people who:

• Have some experience of programming ASP.NET with Visual Basic® .NET
• Are familiar with the operation of the .NET Framework
• Want to learn how to use ASP.NET to make data-centric web applications

What you will learn from this book

For a web site to offer its users an experience that improves on that of newspapers or textbooks, it needs a way to change the information it contains dynamically – and that means it needs access to a data source. Through the combination of ASP.NET and ADO.NET, Microsoft provides everything you need to access, read from, and write to a database so that your web users can view and manipulate that data from a web browser. In this book, we’ll show you how it’s done.

Packed with clear explanations and hands-on examples, Beginning ASP.NET Databases Using VB.NET contains everything you’ll need on your journey to becoming a confident, successful programmer of data-driven web sites. In particular, we’ll look at:

• Connecting to common data sources, including SQL Server® and MS Access
• Reading data with data reader and dataset objects
• Creating and deleting records, and editing data
• Displaying data with ASP.NET’s web server controls
• Writing and using stored procedures from VB.NET code
• Placing your data access code in reusable class libraries

The book closes with a real-world case study that consolidates the tutorials throughout the book into a practical result.

"This book is based on my experience teaching hundreds of developers over the last 12 years. In it, you’ll find everything you need to begin using databases from your ASP.NET applications."
—John Kauffman --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Peer Information (June 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1861006195
• ISBN-13: 978-1861006196
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,128,597 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Best for beginners, October 4, 2002

By 

Southern California .NET User Group (SoCalNETug.org) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beginning ASP.NET Databases using VB.NET (Paperback)

This book is good for people who have minimal experience with VB.NET and ASP.NET. It's very easy to read and understand and find what you need. With little background of VB.NET and ASP.NET, you will be able to write your first database driven web applications. This book is good as a starting point on the subject matter. The book goes through the items in short simple to understand paragraphs.

For experienced developers, you may want to skip the first two chapters. Chapter 2 gives an overview of realational database, how to use the database to retrieve and store the data. Chapter 3 covers methods for connecting to several different data source such as SQL Server, Excel, and XML. Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 have lots of examples in reading and displaying the data using Data Reader and Data Set objects. All the examples in the book use Data Grid control for displaying the data. Later in the book, it discusses ways of using the data grid control for creating,inserting, editing, and deleting records. I tried several of the examples in the book and they worked fine. That is one thing I have come to like about the WROX press books is their examples are very understandable and easy to learn from.

Also, the experienced developer who is interested in learning the subject matter may find many other sections in the book boring because they will go through material they already know. It would be very nice to see a book such as this that can cover the subject for people who are already experienced as developers.

This book is well written and has the information that a junior programmer can use on his/her first programming language and the VB.NET/ASP.NET fundamentals for the experienced programmer to get a first look. ---Reviewed by Michael S.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive and professional beginners book, July 31, 2002

By 

Mark Horner (Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beginning ASP.NET Databases using VB.NET (Paperback)

It is not until you read a book that is dedicated to using databases in ASP.NET that you realize just how much there is to learn. This is a very readable & well structured book with excellent `Try It Out' examples that provide easy to follow step-by-step guides.

Obviously understanding data readers, datasets, command objects and web server controls is vital but there are some rare and extremely useful chapters: componentization - leveraging class libraries for data access, performance, and a chapter that discusses Data-Driven ASP.NET application in the Real World that raises some very interesting issues; for example security tips, raising your own database errors & organizing your code.

The authors not only provide information that you would expect but they offer every encouragement to raise the bar by discussing ways to do things even better; for example `A Better Connection String', creating Data Access classes, and fine tuning dataset & datareaders.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Frustrating Experience, June 16, 2004

By 

Kenneth J. Powers "wyatt70" (Bayside, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beginning ASP.NET Databases Using VB.NET (Paperback)

I've been reading some of the other reviews on this page, and I can't believe they are reading the same book. I have had problems running the code in several of these exercises, particularly with any code that has the DataGrid control. I've also noticed I'm not the only with this problem, since I have browsed the Wrox website forums and found others who were having the same problems with the code. I even submitted code from Chapter 3, page 67 to Microsoft Support, after receiving nothing but a blank page when I ran it. Microsoft noticed that the code was MISSING a required clause! The exercise in question is the FIRST exercise in the book. If the first exercise you attempt fails even though you made no typos, it's frustrating. I can easily see a novice programmer getting discouraged and giving up. I'm an experienced ASP programmer and even I was getting fed up!

I've been a big fan of other books by Wrox, but this one leaves a lot to be desired.