Customer Reviews

Visual Basic .NET Developer's Handbook

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a tough book; "Learn VB .NET in 10 Minutes" it ain't. But if you're willing to put the effort into it, this is a book that contains real meat instead of the fluff you get with so many computer books.

There are a few things you should realize before you begin:

1) This is not an introduction to VB .NET; use some other book for that. This book comes after you've done "Hello World" and a few other minor programs and are wondering how to get from tinkerer to guru.

2) There's a LOT of SQL Server stuff in this book, so if you haven't worked with SQL Server or another OLTP database (Oracle, DB2, Informix, etc.), you won't understand it. You don't have to be a SQL Server guru but you do have to know how to create tables, stored procedures, etc. Knowledge of Access is not enough.

3) Many examples use the built-in SQL Server integration in Server Explorer in the Visual Studio .NET IDE; this requires VS .NET Enterprise. If you have a different version of VS .NET (I have Academic), then get SQL Server Developer Edition (it's reasonably inexpensive) and use the Enterprise Manager to do these parts. Trust me, while you can use Access to do some (not all) of the work, the information in the book is intense enough that you're better off not making things even more complex by trying to use a different database from the examples.

4) It's slow going. That's normal in a nearly 1000-page book which is, unlike most computer books, packed full of information. Don't get discouraged. Realize that you may come to subjects you know nothing about (say, XML) and may have to set the book down, go do some reading, and come back to it. Realize also that if you're used to skimming content-lite books, you'll have to resist the temptation here, or you'll miss a lot.

With all that in mind, if you're a so-so VB .NET programmer looking to make a career of it, or a VB5/6 programmer wanting to learn what's new about .NET, this book is _the_ book you need.

However...I do have to take away a star because of typos in the code. There aren't many, but they seem to occur especially in sections where very similar code is repeated. Think of them as code-reading practice!

The publisher has not seen fit to publish an errata for this book. It certainly needs one.

In chapter 9 the ExplorerStyle sample program demonstrates how to implement custom sorting via a ListView's ListViewItemSorter property and a class implemented using the ICompare interface. Their claim, that the ListView.Sorting property can be used once a ListView.ListViewItemSorter has been assigned, is incorrect. It's impossible to sort the list in descending order by setting the ListView.Sorting property.

Later in that chapter they demonstrate a technique to persist and to reload data using the serialization tools of the .NET Framework. Their sample code is able to persist the data but their code to read and to rebuild the TreeView from the saved data is incorrect. The resulting structure is wrong and the content of the final node is wrong. In addition the data they store in the TreeView.Tag property is not reloaded and assigned to the proper nodes.

In chapter 12 they attempt to demonstrate the use of the Inherits keyword by creaing a child class and supplying a unique Method (CheckDigit) in that class. Unfortunately they didn't think through their example. Later they can't use the child class in their sample code. In order to demonstrate their Method they have to create a dummy instance of the child class so that they can invoke that Method on an instance of the parent class.

Now you might say that my review reflects only two chapters of the book. I reply that I've only read three chapters (chapters 8, 9, and 12) and so far I am mightly unimpressed. The topics of chapters 9 and 12 are not that advanced. The fact that the authors can't get the basics right doesn't give me much confidence in their knowledge of more advanced topics.

This is a good book. The authors know a great deal about the subject. The only draw back is you need to have some VB.NET coding and store procedures writing before attempting to read this book: some of the codes do not work and will require your knowledge to correct them first !

Still worth it, it keeps you mentally alert.