Customer Reviews

Beginning VB .NET 1.1 Databases: From Novice to Professional

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The book is somewhat of a sister to a recent "Beginning ASP.NET 1.1 Databases", with that book's author being one of the authors of this text. There is little here on the elementary, standalone syntax and usages of VB.NET 1.1. That is adequately covered elsewhere. The emphasis is on hooking to databases. Where these are SQL-based, in most practical cases. The text gives much detail about constructing in VB the various SQL commands to be sent to the database server, as queries or statements. And, of course, to parse the results into something meaningful under VB.

You are also offered more. Standing between your VB application and the database is ADO. Microsoft has devices the latter as a uniform front end to different databases, to simplify access. Well worth knowing.

Now if your application also involves a web UI, then you can refer to a section on integrating VB with ASP for making those web pages. For completeness, it was added to the book. Though keep in mind that this ASP section is a less crucial part of the text, compared to learning about ADO.

This is a well thought out and written walkthough of database access in VB.NET. There are a lot of screenshots and graphics, but it works well for the methodical prose that guides you through, what on it's face seems simple but can get complex as you go to professional grade database applications.

It starts with an introduction to the the complete system, then goes into user interface work, database design, queries, transactions, and finally advanced topics.

As the title implies this is a book for beginners. There isn't enough advanced material in here for professional developers, and the pace of the book is too slow for those readers. But if you are just getting started, and VB.NET is your database weapon of choice, then this could be a great book for you.

I purchased this book with the hope of finding useful snippets of VB code for reading and writing to databases. Unfortunately, while there is plenty of discussion on the SQL foundations for working with databases, there is little help here for beginners using the "dive right in" approach.