Customer Reviews

Microsoft® ADO.NET (Core Reference) (PRO-Developer)

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I read through the entire book over the course of about a day and a half. It is nice to find a technical book that is enjoyable to read.

This is currently the best ADO.NET book on the market. While there are a couple of areas where I believe some other books have provided better coverage (concurrency handling, for example), I know of no book that covers the whole of ADO.NET as well as this tome.

The flow of the book is very nice. Starting you out with DataConnections, the book logically moves through commands, readers, adapters and DataSets, which it further breaks down into its constituent parts. The last few chapters cover updates, transactions, XML and a few other advanced topics.

While the writing makes this book easier to read than the competition, I would not rate this as a beginner's book. If you are just getting into ADO.NET, and have not coded many data-driven apps, you will do well to revisit this book in a few months.

The strongest section in this book is probably the extensive coverage of the DataSet. Learning how to manipulate data with a DataSet is core to success with ADO.NET.

One of the biggest disappointments, for me, is the reliance on the System.Data.OleDb namespace. While certainly the most flexible, there should have been a few more SqlClient examples. In all fairness to the author, the SqlClient, OleDb and Oracle providers are covered in the Appendix. The author also warns you about differences between OleDb and SqlClient that you will have to take into account moving your code from one to the other.

I also wish the author had taken a little more time setting up a web application, as most of the application development I do is for the web. As the models for Windows applications and WebForm applications are very similar, this is not a major beef.

The highlight of the book is the bits and pieces the author has inserted into each chapter on the best way to code for performance. While performance is not the only aspect of application development, it is nice when you can write high performance code without creating an overly complex application. Most of the examples shown are as easy, or close to as easy, as the lower performing versions.

As an additional plus, the CD that comes with the book has an electronic copy of the book. As this book will make a good reference, and it is hardbound, it is nice to know you can carry this information around without breaking your back.

I bought this book only knowing a little about ADO.NET. I had been frustrated by other books' sterile explanations and examples that only include the most rudimentary data aware setup using wizards. But this one delivered, including a set of tutorials in the back that cover ADO.NET strategies for Windows, and Web/ASP VS.NET development. And not only did it cover setting up these strategies for using data aware components, but it stopped afterward and then admitted that in most cases you wouldn't use completely data aware solutions and it showed how to do the same thing manually in code. Now that is not what I expected.
So why only four stars instead of five? I got lost in the tutorials once. I was creating the app from scratch according to instructions when it deviated to overview of outstanding points of the code rather than exhaustive examination of the code. Then I had to open the sample projects and divine some of it from the code and compare to mine. That was probably my fault but it was distracting. Also the naming conventions are hungarian notation for some variables and control names (which is discouraged in newer C# VS.NET documentation) and the C# code had VB-type Pascal-case rather than correct Camel case. This is typical in most C# Microsoft documentation in books and online, which is obviously ported from VB to C# examples and doesn't follow documented recommended naming conventions (sorry, a pet peeve of mine).

Ok, I have read a lot of good books on MS tech. I am myself a MCSD/MCDBA/MCSE, and I can tell you, it doesn't get much better than this.

Here is why.

First of all, I never review without reading a book cover to cover. I read this book cover to cover, and I love the way the author keeps the text anything from dull. I love it the way he puts in small jokes, which still are somewhat pertinent.
Secondly, I love it's practical touch. He points out specific problems that I have faced, and this book puts me right in the forefront as far as problems I will only know about, after having worked with ADO.NET hardcore for 2-3 years.
Thirdly, it's relevance. Most books start beating around the bush, atleast in certain topics they do. This book picks very pertinent issues, and gives practical explanations including criticisms as and when appropriate.

BUY IT. :)

This book was very instrumental in my leap from classic ADO to ADO.Net. The book is very easy to follow and gives good code examples. The book gives a great introduction to all the key principles of ADO.Net and won't leave you stranded without a clue.

The only downsides to this book are:
The book is written for both C# and VB.Net development and would have been very thin if not so. The book was a very quick read, only taking about 4 days to finish. More detail could have been given in the space taken. The other problem I had was that the cover of the book came unglued from the book when I was about 1/2 way through, which wasn't pleasing to say the least.
Lastly, some examples contain errors, which only slightly takes away from the greatness of the book.

Based on content and how easy it was to pick up on ADO.Net I have to give 4 stars.

I spent almost 8 months struggling with ADO .NET, bought a couple of books and just could't get it done efectively. Thank God for David Sceppa and this wonderful book.

From the very first page you start getting what's going on, and how you must get things done, no goofing around, just a very simple explanation of the concept, and then an example in both VB and C#, which is great because I'm thinking of moving away from VB and get into C#.

Every single object is clearly explained here, DataSets, DataTables, DataRows, Connections, Commands, DataReaders, DataAdapters, DataViews, and each of them's got all its proerties and methods thouroughly explained.

Before reading this book I was builduing an application with ADO .Net and it had the worst, dirtiest code you've ever seen, after reading this book, my code has reduced itself about 60%, and is cleaner, more understandable and it will be much easier to maintain.

There just can't be a better book to get up to speed with ADO .Net, it is really a must have.

In the .NET arena, there are a zillion books available. Many are rehashes of the documentation; many aren't worth the paper they're written on. This book isn't one of those. David Sceppa (who turns out to not only be an excellent writer, and a strong public presence on the support newsgroups, but a sincerely nice guy), has written a book that's actually useful. Not only does it include explanations of how ADO.NET fits together, David's book also includes explanations of how and why you should make choices about particular implementation details in your applications. The comfortable tone, the reliability of the information, and the graciousness of the author make this a top pick, from my perspective. (I must confess that I've found a few small details that have changed in the product since the time David wrote the book, and he's been incredibly responsive, when possible, to my correspondence. Not many authors take the time to respond immediately, if at all.) I wish there were more books out there like this one.

Very good book. It's very easy to read and understand. The most important thing that I liked was lots of programming hints. The author gives you several techniques to choose from and then explains advantages/disadvantages of using them (like speed, amount of code to write). I was specifically looking for advanced update scenarios, and the book gives a lot explanation on that too (resolving update conflicts, getting autoincrement/timestamp values from the database, updating hirachical data). It's also a good reference for everyday use.

The book could be the best MS press book i ever got. Of course you can find all the documentations about ADO.NET related classes from msdn, but this book presents the technology in a clear and logical way. Very easy to follow. It covers almost all topics about ADO.NET in reasonable details, coupled with plenty of snippets to practice. First time i read the table of contents of the book i thought it is just another scrach-surface introductory book from MS, turn out to be the author knows the topic well and present it in depth and nicely.

I think this book is a must have if you are doing or plan to do .NET development. Afterall how can you develop an application without thinking about database access nowdays. I donot think this book is for beginners, better have some ADO experience to appreciate this book.

This book provides a great introduction to ADO.NET. It covers the various aspects of connected and connectionless data access very well. I do feel like I need another book for more advanced topics (caching of data in scalable enterprise environments, for example), but this book is a great start.

One complaint, that has more to do with the writing style, is that the author tends to introduce a way of doing something, only to show a more correct way later in the book. If you need to use the book as a reference, you have to be aware that you might flip to a "bad" way of doing something that is later improved.

Overall this book is a collection of various ADO.NET topics from the SDK and documentation. David Sceppa has managed to collect all the various topics and re-write them and simplify the subject. The book does flow well. Chapter 13 ties all the pieces of the technology together.

A website for the components provided by the author will be available shortly.