Customer Reviews

Pro SQL Server 2008 Entity Framework (Expert's Voice in .NET)

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3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The first thing to say about this book is that it's rather thin. And it contains a LOT of screenshots. Which means it's really a very basic "introduction" book rather than a "Pro" one. But worse than that, it was obsolete even before it was published!

Unfortunately, the approach taken is very much a "step by step" guide showing each and every screenshot of what the UI should look like as you work your way through different wizards and scenarios. The trouble is that UI changed even before the book was published. The book was written to a beta version of Visual Studio 2010 despite being officially published after Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate was released. Those who want a detailed guide will get frustrated at the "treat the user like an idiot and show him every screenshot" approach taken (presumably to help pad the page count out) while those who like this style will quickly get frustrated because the screenshots don't reflect any kind of reality as too much has been changed since the beta.

Apress publish some great books, but this isn't one of them. My guess is that it's been rushed to market to cash in on the demand for information before what most consider "the bible" (Julie Lehrman's O'Reilly book) gets updated to the latest version. Clearly Julie and her publishers have more integrity, waiting until the product is "fully baked" before rushing out a book on the product. And certainly her "Version 1" book on the same subject had far more depth and detail than this slim, introductory volume does.

I regret buying this book, and would strongly urge others to avoid doing so. Wait for the O'Reilly book, or an alternative that reflects the reality of what you'll have to work with, rather than an early beta.

If you're new to programming and want a lightweight intro to EF 4 with lots of screen shots that show you step by step how to use the designer, then this is the book for you. If you're a senior programmer who expects a Pro book to actually be about programming, don't buy this book, you'll be very disappointed. I had this book preordered based solely on the fact that it's a Pro book from Apress, which at one time was a top notch publisher. This is one of the two worst technical books I've ever bought (the other is Windows Azure Platform, another recent Apress product). I will definitely wait until I see the Amazon reviews before I buy another Apress book.

This is very much a beginner's book and will be of virtually no help to you if you are developing a real-world application. The phrase that first come to mind is "executive summary"; indeed, as another reviewer commented, the "pro" designator on this book is laughable. In a couple hours, I managed to cover about half the book. This is not a commentary on my reading speed but, rather, is reflective of the depth of the author's work. There's not too much in the book that one couldn't discover by just playing around with the EF designer. Quite simply, the tome has no meat and has no place on a professional developer's bookshelf. If you are a beginner to .Net and have little experience with DB access technology in general, then maybe this could serve as high-level overview of EF for you, otherwise...

A couple of the reviewers complained about too many screenshots. Another one complained about it being too easy. I personally don't view either of those complaints as faults of the book. If you already an experienced Entity Framework Programmer then you probably aren't going to learn a whole lot of new things by purchasing a book on the latest version of the Entity Framework. The upgrades in Entity Framework from 3.5 to 4.0 are incremental, not revolutionary.
Even though I don't agree with a couple of the other reviews on "why" this book is horrible. I do agree that it is horrible. And the most glaring reason I would not recommend purchasing the book is because of a severe lack of editing. There are typos and grammar errors constantly throughout the book. There are also code logic errors throughout the book. Chapter 13 on Data Binding with the Entity Framework has to be the very worst in terms of logical errors. For example, on page 237 of the book, the author shows an excerpt of code, that contains C# statements that modify a dateGridView. On the current example, he hasn't even instructed the reader to add a dataGridView to the Windows Form so your project will not compile. He does go on to instruct adding a dataGridView later in the same chapter(on page 239) to build on the example. But the point is, the code excerpt shown for the current working example on page 237 will not compile if you are following along with the book in page order.
Another example of logical errors. On page 243 he shows the following event handler being implemented as follows:

private void productModelBindingNavigatorSaveItem_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
productModelBindingSource.EndEdit();
context.SaveChanges();
}

Apparently, he forgot that he already implemented those lines of code in the same event handler just 1 page before. There are at least 2 other logical errors in this chapter but I think I've given enough examples of this problem.
The last reason you might not want to buy this book, if you haven't already, is because it is already outdated. The author talks about using a ContextBuilder in a code example on page 175. The ContextBuilder class he uses in the example is no longer the recommended method for creating an ObjectContext when using a code-only approach for your Model. Of course, this is no fault of the author or the publisher. Just an unfortunate consequence of how fast technology changes.

This book would be pretty good if it had been properly edited. But it wasn't.

This book has a few advantages: it addresses the EF 4.0, it lays out the novelties compared to the earlier versions of EF and ... that's pretty much it.

For a Pro it is way too big and way too much filled with basic information.

For a beginner, it is badly laid out. It consists, in fact, of a bunch of information crammed into a small space.

There is no tutorial-like feeling, the higher-level explanations are mixed up with the lower-level (screen shots and simple demos, for beginners) so the person who's just begun EF has to read a lot to make sense of the host of info this book bombards the reader with.

There are way too many books out there assuming that humans are robotic memorizers of information. This is one of them.

I have been deceived by the title of this book. I regret every minute spent on reading the first 5 chapters till I decided to throw it away.

The book is certainly not a Pro book, but is not even introductory. This book is a failure guideline or product documentation.

Do not buy. Save your time, I would not say money, because the time spent on this useless book is more valuable. And by the way, the book is so expensive though.

Thanks.

If you're looking to get started with .Net's Entity Framework, this book is a fine place to start. The first chapter lays nicely out the the history of data access with .NET and setting up the vocabulary and groundwork for the rest of the book. From there the book goes into depth about the Entity Data Modeling tools built into VS2010.

Other reviewers have noted that the book is thin and full of screenshots. This isn't necessarily a bad thing if you're looking for an introduction to .NET's Entity Framework. What is frustrating is that the screenshots were done in the pre-RTM version of VS2010 and laid out such that the text that refers to those screenshots is most often on the wrong page, and you have to flip back and forth for reference. Also, the typeface and line spacing make it hard for me to read, and there are various typos throughout.

Overall, this is a fine book but it feels like it was rushed out on a deadlne and thus has some rough edges.

Being a programmer for 35 years and using .NET since 2002: this is one of the worst books I've ever bought - in every aspect: style, accuracy, not up-to-date, exotic vocabulary, ...

And: when will Apress understand that VB.NET and C# are equal? So at least make both languages available in downloads!

This book gives an easily understandable introduction to MS Entity Framework 4.0 (Visual Studio 2010). At only 280 pages the author gets right to the point and concentrates on practical matters. I finished the book in only 10 hours and quickly made progress on my own project using the same patterns showed in the book. The text is not so narrow that you can only recreate the examples, yet not so broad that you drown in details either. If you need to know every nook and cranny of EF, then Julia Lerman's 800 page tome is necessary, but to get started using the framework, this book is awesome. Three days after purchasing this book I now have the first version of my planned app up and running with WinForms, WPF and web client, all talking to the same WCF layer that gets data from EF. That may not be impressing to some of you, but I'm not a professional programmer, just a hobbyist.

Pro Entity Framework 4.0