Customer Reviews

Programming Microsoft ADO.NET 2.0 Core Reference

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
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I normally buy Wrox books and up until .NET I was very happy with them, but their .NET books (ASP.NET 2.0 and VB.NET particularly) were poorly organized with massive numbers of errors in them. I wanted an ADO.NET book but the customer reviews of the Wrox title were poor so I kept looking and found this book that has much better reviews. I'd not bought a Microsoft Press book recently because I didn't like the last one I tried so this was an act of faith for me.

I have to say, thought, that this book is an order of magnitude better than the recent Wrox books I have bought. I don't know if the single author approach simply results in a better book or if the particular author (David Sceppa) can take the credit. Either way, I think Wrox needs to stop publishing books with multiple authors.

The problem with ADO.NET is that everything is intermingled and it's hard to discuss, say, DataSets without mentioning DataTables or DataAdapters. David (or someone) say down and very carefully figured out the sequence to explain stuff with the minimum of forward referencing. This means there are only a few unresolved references I have to hold in my brain at a time for which I am very grateful. On the down-side, this means there is some repetition as he discusses the same class relationship from different perspectives in different chapters. At first I found this annoying until I realized that this was actually making my life as the reader much easier.

I have yet to find a single error and the sample code in particalar seems to be error free which is in stark contrast to the Wrox .NET books. The samples themselves are compact and clean and writen in both VB and C# which is a handy way for a VB programmer like me to learn a little C# on the cheap. I certainly never found myself thinking 'The purpose of this sample is to add 10 unncecessary pages to this book' unlike other books *cough*XML Bible*cough*.

I'm only about one third of the way through right now but I am very impressed.

I really hope someone from Wrox reads this because I'd like the old Wrox back that published great technical books.

I am a huge ADO.NET nut and David's first book was absolutely priceless. After his last book, he set a very high bar that was going to be hard to meet, yet that's exactly what he did.

Pros:

- He discusses every facet of the ADO.NET library and does it well
- He doesn't shy away from difficult topics and in particular, goes straight at them in his Advanced Update section
- Excellent flow
- Won't leave you hanging if you don't know the 1.x framework but doesn't bog itself down in it either.
- Stellar writing style. David is interesting and always keeps you wanting to read more. He's concise, to the point yet does both without ever leaving you wanting for more.

CONS
-Calling this a con is probably a bit unfair but if there's one thing I didn't like was the coverage to TableAdapters. This has nothing to do with Sceppa's coverage and everything to do with the objects themselves. Since I never use them I have a bias against them. With that said, I doubt you could do a Core Reference without covering them so this doesn't really count.

The specific areas that this book really does a great job in is Transactions, Advanced Updates and client side data manipulation. Items like the syntax for DataTable.Select are covered in such stellar detail there's probably no situation that you will be unprepared for. Transactions are another complex area and this section alone makes the book worth its price. Advanced updates are a must in any ADO.NET book and history repeated itself here.

Pure Gold plain and simple.

This book is intended for people writing data access code in a Microsoft .NET application. ADO (Active Data Object) .NET is a set of libraries within the Microsoft .NET framework that helps you to communicate with various data sources from .NET applications.

The newest version of ADO.NET which comes with Visual Studio 2005 is the first major release that does not introduce a new object model. This implies that the fundamental technology is reaching a point of stability in spite of several problems that users are requesting such as better support for XML.

Most of the illustrations in the book use the SQL Server Express Edition which is free, and redistributable. As such, it is helpful if you have at least a bit of knowledge about programming in SQL. The more work you can get done in SQL, the faster your application will run. I would recommend the purchase of an additional book on T-SQL, the specific version of the SQL language used with SQL Server. This book is more concerned with connecting to your database with a program that you might write.

It is not "ADO for Dummies" or a tedious quick tutorial. Have a working handle on either C# or VB going in because it's not going to explain it. There are no lengthy history lessons or idle chit-chat.

With that said, this is a fast pace process through ADO with examples in both languages. It neither glosses nor dwells but moves through what you need when you need it. It is well structured from getting started with hookups and data readers through heavy lifting with parameterization on multi and mixed providers at the end. Most everything else is in between including working offline, online, modification and return to database.

Physically doing the examples, in sequence, provides the tutorial and the opportunity to play what-if to soak it in. Each sections assumes you understand the previous. In the end, this will give you a working foundation. It's well indexed and makes a good reference text for the bookshelf after teaching the basics.

I've had this book over a year and is still one of my go-to's. Recommended...

This book is a book you can read, learn and understand the core material that makes Ado.Net work, how it works, and how to make it work for you. You gain a deeper understanding of Ado.Net. The book is well written, easy to understand, provided you have the basics covered, and will give you the grasp on Ado.Net to really make it work for you.

Wow, this is the book I was looking for! David Sceppa did a great job on this book. Programming Microsoft ADO.NET 2.0 is very easy to understand and has a lot of code samples that I can use in my production environment. I learned how to loop through data using ado.net and inserting, updating, and deleting using stored procedures with ado.net. On page four-hundred fifty three came in handy "Submitting Updates Using Parameterized SqlCommands". I love the way it shows you in VB and C Sharp. The book also talks about xml documents which is very helpful too in my case. The book is for reference only I would recomend the book to beginners and advanced users. Most of the samples here use SQL Server Express edition which is free to download at the microsoft site. If you are looking to learn t-sql also this is not the book for you. You will need to buy a t-sql book. Thank you David Sceppa and Microsoft Press I am very impressed with this book.

This book is great. I finally understand how ADO.NET works! And I've read quite a few books on the topic.

I find that most other books just tell you HOW to do things in ADO.Net without much explanation as to WHY you should. In my opinion, this book never does that. It explains WHY you should do something even before going into the HOW. I love that.

I wish the author would write a book on the new versions of ADO.NET, though.

Highly recommended book.

I only wish David were going to do an ADO.NET 3.5 or 4.0 version of this book. It is a REALLY good coverage of such a broad topic. There are just so many nuggets of wisdom in the book that you can tell he has labored long and hard with ADO.NET as much more than a programmer.

I have spent WAY more time than most going over every little sample and fact to put into my own product information. There are just so many little things here that you cannot find in MSDN sources. This is what MSDN technical docs used to look like 10 years ago. Now they all end up as blog post collections.

If you need introductory level material the book is great. If you need spec information for making your own ADO.NET provider it has a decent amount of information. But both of those scenarios assume you already know VB or C# and are familiar with databases in some shape or form.

I routinely send customers to this book telling them where to look for information. The coverage of concepts is just fantastic. It is hard to find all this information online or through MSDN. You need to access data using ADO.Net? This is the book you need.

UPDATE: I have gotten an email from the author saying he is considering doing an updated version of the book! Maybe more people should contact him and encourage him to do it. This is a treasure trove of information for any programmer needing to access data using ADO.Net.

I was assigned to work on a project using VS 2008 with SQLServer Express. Not knowing anything about ADO.NET but having read other books by this excellent author, I bought this book (actually, I ended up with 2 copies by mistake - however I leave one copy at home).

Sceppa covers everything extensively regarding untyped datasets and, being a slow learner, I hard a hard time taking the material he presents and applying it to strongly typed datasets, which in my opinion he covers too scantily. Then I discovered the TypedTableBase(Of xxxRow) class in the VS help files. I printed a copy of this Help topic, and with this in hand, I can easily connect untyped-to-typed datasets.

All in all, it's a very useful book. If he ever writes an updated edition, maybe he can save others some time by expanding the typed dataset topic. Better coverage of DataGridViews and bound controls in general would also be helpful.

This book does a great job at explaining each concept it covers. I started the book with many misconceptions of disconnected data and other ADO.NET items. The book has many great code examples that are kept short and to the point. I definitely recommend this book to my team and anyone else wanting a stronger understanding of how to effectively use ADO.NET. Some of the performance tips it provides will suprise you.