Customer Reviews

Hitchhiker's Guide to Visual Studio and SQL Server: Best Practice Architectures and Examples, 7th Edition (Microsoft Windows Server System Series)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Bill Vaughn's Hitchhiker's series has been on my bookshelves since the first edition. I've always acknowledged Bill as one of the industry experts in SQL Server and his knowledge of the subject is well illustrated in the latest addition to his book series. The "Hitchhiker's Guide to Visual Studio and SQL Server" can very well become the one "bible" you need on this topic if you insist on having only one book on any particular topic. There are many books on SQL Server out there, each with their strengths and weaknesses, but the Hitchhiker's Guide explains things in plain English while still appealing to the techie in me. Great job - again - as can only be expected from the author. Oh, and if you throw it at somebody, you are likely to kill them.

Bill Vaughn is a stickler for attention to detail. I wouldn't want to work for him :-) but it is truly priceless to have his knowledge, experience, and expertise handy in book form when you are faced with taming the beast that is SQL Server 2005, and programming against it.

No stone is left unturned in this book, in true Bill Vaughn fashoin. He not only nails the fundamentals, but offers countless insights that come from experience, as well as a a never-ending supply of his famously dry and searing humor.

I would pay twice the cost of this book for the utility I'm getting out of it.

So, you want to program SQL Server 2005 using Visual Basic 2005. Then you should buy this book. No one does things quite as Bill does. In a tour-de-force effort, Bill, with the some help from Peter, shares a treasure trove of valuable information about how to build the best data-enabled applications regardless of your skill level. Bill's a master and his experience with SQL Server is legendary. What's even better is you get Bill's candid view on things. He's not afraid to tell you what works and what doesn't. He takes his job as an author seriously.
At over 1000 pages, this is a serious book. The range of topics covered is rich. Bill covers writing code by hand and using drag & drop. He compares new features like CLR stored procedures with more traditional approaches and he backs up his opinion with code and tests. Bill has filled this seventh (yes, he's been doing this a while) edition with annotated screen shots, code listings, and thoughtful commentary--all of which help you, dear reader, to have a safe and happy journey. For the price of this book, you're getting priceless amounts of help and guidance. Buy it now.

Reading the book, it is clear why Bill is a Microsoft MVP. I appreciate how Peter and he precisely describe and assess this complex landscape, including traps and warts. I believe you will also appreciate their deep knowledge.

Depending where you are on your journey to designing and building powerful solutions with SQL Server and Visual Studio, some of the chapters will be more valuable than others. I assure you that there will be sections of the book that are exactly what you need. The knowledge can keep you from making big mistakes, either in your selection of which version of SQL Server to use, in architecture and design, or simply in trying to figure out the myriad of implementation choices you might otherwise try on your own through days and days of trial and error.

As a software program manager, I appreciated gaining an overall appreciation for how the technologies and techniques need to fit together to deliver a successful solution. I especially appreciated the early chapters on architecture, the flowchart showing how to debug a connection on page 142, and other advice scatter through the book.

In subsequent books or articles from these authors, I'd appreciate more architectural graphics, e.g. showing various data access layers, and also a description of how AJAX techniques affect how we should think about building data-centric web applications.

I expect this book to be a valuable reference for many years to come.

I am very inmpressed with this book! This is one that will be dog earred.

In sometimes pungent commentaries, Vaughn and Blackburn give a detailed education about properly using SQL Server, where Visual Studio is also used, to make the front end code. There is a tangled history of how Microsoft developed SQL Server, Visual Studio and accompanying languages like Visual Basic .NET and ADO.NET. With perfect hindsight, the development trajectory performed by Microsoft might have been unnecessarily complex. But the book deals with SQL Server and Visual Studio as they now exist in the latest versions, as something you have to deal with.

There is a brief chapter going over the basics of relational databases, and how to design a set of tables for your data. Generic stuff. But most of the text deals with many details specific to SQL Server.

Out of the book's bulk, perhaps a key focus for you should be how to write and edit stored procedures. Vital in improving the efficiency of your overall system, by eliminating unneeded data flows from the server to the front end machine and back. Chapter 5 discusses these stored procedures. Forget for a moment about all that UI stuff. There is plenty of discussion in the book about that topic. Instead, you should try to clearly understand this chapter and be able to confidently write such stored procedures. Unglamorous backend details, but essential.

I have been programming for years and didn't really realize how much I didn't know.

Mr. Vaughn has been building databases and writing code against them since the beginning. His explanations of DB and ADO evolution is something that every webApp/dba should know.

The book is a fast read, imformative with lots of .Net examples.

Thanks for writing such a great book. I am excited to get the next version.

This is truly an outstanding book. Not only is it extremely well written and "readable" (unfortunately many a tech book is not these days), I feel it begins a dialog of sorts between the developer side of the fence and the database side of the fence (were that there were no fences, alas).

I've visited far too many organizations that work in near complete isolation when developing applications. For those types of organizations, no tool like Team System will improve things: if they don't collaborate already, a tool won't get them to do so.

We need more books like this in the market. Today's technology is so complex you simply can not perform your role properly without understanding the larger picture.

I'm a C programmer, new to SQL and Windows programming.

Bill's book has gotten me up to speed on SQL Server and Visual Studio in record time.

I looked at a number of books on these subjects and this one definitely stands out as being the most comprehensive. At the same time, it is easy to follow.

I highly recommend the book.

Simply put: This guy talks too much. I want a book that can show me how to do things and move along. This author likes using acronyms in his writings (LOL, FWIW, AFAIC, etc.) without providing a glossary for them. Some I know, but not all. I'm sure there is good information in it, but I just don't have a year to read this. I need to develop now! Does anyone want to buy my copy of this book? I'll be happy to sell it to you!