Customer Reviews

Microsoft ADO.NET 4 Step by Step (Step by Step (Microsoft))

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I'm writing this review in response to one of the previous reviews written here...had I read Dave's review, I wouldn't have purchased this book --which is unfortunate because it's a great book! I have little experience with Microsoft and come from an open source background, so this is all new to me. So far I have only read the first 60 pages (I bought this book two days ago), but I can say the examples are great and the author, so far, has done an incredible job explaining things. If you're new to ADO.NET and need a way of quickly getting up to speed, this book will be a great asset!

I'm confused by Dave's comment about the book being "a combination of random snippets that never bring anything together" because that simply isn't true. The author, actually, provides SEVERAL complete and fully functional examples you can download and modify during the exercises!

Dave also cites his confusion about datatables and finds fault with the author for his confusion --when the author has provided a lucid explanation on the subject! How is this the author's fault?!

Anyway, it's a great book and if you're looking for a balance between theory and "hands on," this is probably your book...

Clear, straightforward, and truly step by step, this book will make a more than decent introduction for the developer who is totally new to accessing and manipulating data with the .NET platform. I really love the idea of the step by step exercises and having a "before" and "completed" version of the exercises. Another big plus is that there the code is written in both C# and VB version, both in the book examples and in the example code.. And the code is easy to understand and actually works.. I did find a couple of mistakes, and a little problem with some of the examples due to the fact that running in a non english locale date parsing will not work as expected by the book example code.. but I guess those can be viewed as minor and almost inevitable faults.. I also liked the fact that the author has chosen GUI examples and not the typical command line ones.. Having GUI code around does complicates things a little bit, but at least you get to see data manipulation in a more realistic and "satisfying" scenario.. I do have a minor gripe about this though: I think that the author should have used WPF examples throughout the book and left windows form in the 90's where they belong :) Also I think that the learning experience would have been much richer if the author had spent a little time illustrating and explaining the structure and workings of the application to complete in the step by step exercises. I know that is not the point of the book, but concentrating so exclusively on the ado code in the examples application risks to compromise the understanding of the big picture and makes for a very mechanical experience..

As for coverage, this book makes a decent job of covering all major areas, from data tables, to Linq, EF and WCF data services.. but at this page count it can only manage to do so in a way that is valuable only to the beginner. I understand that a deep and through treatment of all of ADO related technologies would be impossible to do in a single book , and even if it was possible it would not be appropriate for the beginner, but considering that this a small book being quite "sparsely written" and rich in illustrations I think that saving some whit3 space, using smaller fonts and similar tricks would have permitted to almost double the number of step by step examples without endangering your back when you carry the book around ... and that would have made this "the book" to get an introduction to ADO.NET

As with the other book, I haven't made it all the way through this book yet, however, what I have done the book is well written, covers the basics of the subject well and will start one down the path to understanding ADO. Please do understand that this book is not an all inclusive containment of the subject as ADO.NET is a rather deep subject. What this book does is start one down the path to understanding ADO with the 4.0 .net framework. I understand much of the subject but I purchased the book for the new stuff. Study well and enjoy as this will start you down the road to programming ADO.NET.

the book is not written to teach. it is a combination of random snippets that never bring anything together or explore range of uses.

i bought this book as a reference to using methods other than command object (my lifelong safety net). patrick uses the datatable everywhere with random snippets but never a complete set of code.

from reading the book i have no idea if datatable requires a dataset or connection to connect to the database.

yes the book was written for beginers, but even experienced users who are looking to expand their toolset will often struggle.

I had the opportunity of read this book and I didn't find any tip or advanced topic. I think so the book was written to beginners.