19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
.Net Essentials, April 16, 2003
The .NET Framework edition of publisher O'Reilly® Essentials series is an excellent introduction to Microsoft's new software development framework. This book is suitable for any developer who wants to understand what this new initiative is all about without having to manually strip away the marketing hype. At no point will you come across the phrase "That's the power of .NET" while reading this book. Though the authors are understandably enthusiastic about their chosen subject, their appraisal of the technology is honest, and insightful. However, this is not a how-to book. Most of the practical subjects that are discussed, such as how to create Web Services and Windows Applications using the new .NET SDK, are kept at an intentionally superficial level. This is actually a good thing, since a more in-depth look would detract from the true subject of the book: the .NET architecture, and how it works.
For anyone who has ever developed with Java, .NET is going to seem awfully familiar. Both run on a virtual machines (though not exactly in the same way.) Both provide a garbage collector, thread management, exception handling, and a fully object-oriented programming paradigm. The class structures of their respective SDKs are eerily similar, and even the syntax of Microsoft's newly touted C derivative, C# (pronounced c-sharp), owes a lot to the Java programming language. There are some key differences that differentiate Microsoft's system from Sun's, but as a reader who has coded in Java, I appreciate the fact that the authors often make comparisons between the two. With this approach, Thai and Lam have helped me dismiss my initial suspicion that .NET is really just Java for Windows, and have properly explained why Microsoft's framework is in some ways even more ambitious than Java originally was.
.NET Framework Essentials is nicely broken up into eight chapters, each of which addresses the interests of potential software developers. The first four chapters give an overview of the framework's design goals and discuss software development issues such as how to program for .NET, and how to work with .NET components. The second half of the book deals with the four main services provided by .NET: data processing (ADO.NET and XML), Web Services, Web Forms, and Windows Forms. A chapter is devoted to each, and enough code examples are given to illustrate the concepts that you'll finish each topic with at least a general idea of how to approach a problem in that domain. Again though, this book is an overview, and is not meant to be a reference manual by any means.
One of the strongest points about this book is that it doesn't rely on the reader having access to a copy of Visual Studio.NET. Though it is mentioned several times, all code examples are given with instructions for building using the command-line compilers that come standard with the SDK. This allows readers to download the SDK from Microsoft and try the applications on his or her own computer for free. This book does a very good job of covering the comprehensive tools provided by Microsoft, and could actually be considered a good reference for the command-line arguments of these programs. An appendix is devoted to this very subject, in fact.
There are only a couple of topics that would probably be of interest to experienced developers that I feel were not properly covered in this book. The first is a distinct lack of discussion regarding interoperability between .NET programs and tradition ANSI C++ programs and libraries (or even Windows applications coded using the Win32 API.) .NET is multi-language, but for a language to be part of the club, it needs to conform to .NET's Common Language Specification, which traditional C++ does not do. Microsoft has produced Managed C++ as a possible gateway between the two, but it's not clear at all how well .NET will deal with traditional libraries such as the STL, or even with more specific packages such as OpenGL. This is an issue that should have deserved a few paragraphs in this book, at least.
The second issue I had was that given that .NET relies on a common SDK for all of it's languages, and given that this is a book that covers the essentials of the NET framework, it would be reasonable to assume that the SDK would be one of it's main topics. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Having read the book, I understand why that is so, but I could also see this as being slightly misrepresentative for anyone picking this book up off the shelf expecting a reference book on the .NET SDK.
All in all, .NET Framework Essentials is an excellent overview of the subject for someone who doesn't know much about it and would like to know more. It targets developers who have experience, and doesn't treat them like fools. In general, it's a read-once book that you might refer to later for it's excellent coverage of Microsoft's command-line tools.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A quick introduction to .Net, April 19, 2002
".Net Framework Essentials" is a good introduction to the .Net framework. It will, however, leave you hungry for much more. The authors have chosen to keep their book short (300 pages) and yet cover most aspects of .Net. The authors starts out with an overview of .Net and the Common Language Runtime (CLR). They then go on to discuss some simple programs written in the main supported .Net languages (VB.NET, Managed C++, and C#). The authors then move on to the meat of .Net. We get chapters on ADO.Net and integration with XML, Web Services, ASP.NET, and Windows Forms. What this means is that each topic is covered very briefly. For example, ASP.NET is covered in 60 pages. O'Reilly publishes a book on this topic that is almost 1,000 pages long! There is also nothing in the way of linking any of the information in the book to VisualStudio.Net which is the tool that most .Net developers will be using. Most of the examples in the book use C# so some knowledge of that language (or Java) will be helpful. As an overall view of and introduction to the .Net framework, this book is useful. Anyone unfamiliar with the different pieces that make up .Net will have a much clearer understanding when they have finished this book. But this will not be the last .Net book you need and it will not be a book that you refer back to very often.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Great Introduction, but too detailed for many readers, March 31, 2002
As anyone knows, the .NET framework is being touted as not only the next big thing but the merging of several technologies to create the web based revolution. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. I came into this book looking for a good overview of what .NET meant to me and what potential did it hold. I got that to some extent but had to really work for it.
The book is very good at giving information on the new framework. The problem is that I, and I am willing to bet many other readers, were looking for an authorative view of what .NET means and can do, rather than how it does it. It's as if I wanted to find out about the new class of car and what its features are and what it can do. Instead I am handed a concise mechanics manual that tries to explain the highlights of how things work under the hood.
I learned a lot, but I think I took away more from this book because I read some other materials first. Had I simply dived into this book, I would have been lost. This is not an "introdutory" book for most of us. For coders and developers, yes this will be helpful and essential - for them this is a very powerful book. For the "rest" of us - it's very informative if you are willing to wade through the details. Find something specific about .net you want to learn about, read up on that and THEN come to this book and get the details in order to build a full understanding of the technology.
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