Introducing .NET (Mass Market Paperback)

by James Conard (Author), Patrick Dengler (Author), Brian Francis (Author), Jay Glynn (Author), Burton Harvey (Author), Billy Hollis (Author), Rama Ramachandran (Author), John Schenken (Author), Scott Short (Author), Chris Ullman (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Introducing .NET provides a guide to the emerging set of technologies and standards that will be a part of the Microsoft .NET platform. Ideal for any programmer (or IT manager) who works with Windows, this title gives a worthwhile preview of a compelling set of technologies and of new ways to program for the Internet.

Apart from browsing the current .NET beta and documentation from Microsoft, it's somewhat difficult to find a way to understand all of the various aspects of .NET. The authors of this book have done the legwork for you and packaged their discoveries in a concise volume that examines numerous APIs and tools that developers will be using in the next year or so.

After a quick overview of .NET, the book looks at the Common Language Runtime (CLR), which allows different languages (like VB and C#) to interoperate on .NET. This focus is ideal for programmers who want to understand the future of programming. The book handily summarizes what the new C# language will offer, explaining in detail how Visual Basic 7 (now Visual Basic.NET) will differ from early versions of the language. In case you haven't seen the beta of the new Microsoft Visual Studio.NET, you get a tour of its features and interface. Other sections delve into the actual .NET classes you'll be using for development. (These APIs can be accessed from any programming language.) Material on the new Windows Forms and Web Forms shows the future of building user interfaces on the Windows platform. Other sections look at the new ASP.NET (for creating dynamic Web pages) and ADO.NET (for database programming).

Another compelling reason to read this book is its discussion of Web services, a potentially winning concept for a new generation of software. Using the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), an XML standard for describing services, .NET programmers can call remote Web services almost as easily as local functions. The authors provide a remarkably simple example (which packages weather information on a custom Web page). Clearly, this is a core technology on .NET, and the book does a good job of explaining its potential.

Introducing .NET provides the blueprint for understanding what's to be included in the new .NET. Despite an understandable amount of "cheerleading" for Microsoft's new platform, this is good nuts-and-bolts information that's timely and just what developers need to understand the future of computing on Windows. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered:

• Overview of the Microsoft .NET platform
• .NET design goals and features
• The Common Language Runtime (CLR) (common types and metadata)
• Tutorial for C# (data types and control flow, class design, and events)
• Visual Basic.NET (new features, summary of language changes, migrating old VB code to version 7)
• Tour of the Visual Studio.NET Beta 1 IDE
• Basic classes in the .NET class framework (including collection classes)
• ASP.NET (ASP vs. ASP.NET comparison, new features, and advantages)
• Web services and the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)
• Sample Web service for weather information
• Windows Forms (including GDI)
• Distributing .NET components (assemblies, business objects, and unmanaged code)
• ADO.NET and database programming
• Survey of Microsoft enterprise server products
• Case study for a Web-enabled parts inventory system in .NET
• Reference for .NET packages
• Using traditional COM components within .NET

Product Description
.NET is Microsoft's vision of "software as a service", a development environment in which you can build, create, and deploy your applications and the next generation of components, termed Web Services. All of Microsoft's major flagship products from Visual Studio to Windows and eventually Office are gradually being integrated into the vision and they will all offer services that will allow greater integration between products. .NET will allow developers to develop in whatever language they are comfortable with, via the introduction of a common language runtime, whilst at the same time provide "building block services" to ease application development.

Introducing .NET is designed to tell you exactly what you need to know, to cut through the fog and to bring you a clear picture of what .NET is, and what you can expect to be able to do using it.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 500 pages
• Publisher: Wrox Press; 1st edition (January 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1861004893
• ISBN-13: 978-1861004895
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,702,030 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

62 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars New technology - average information, February 1, 2001

By	[e-mail] (Nashville, TN USA) - See all my reviews

I own quite a few Wrox books. For awhile, they were consistently the best programmers books on the market. Unfortunately, this new trend to be the first with new technologies is lessening the quality of the newer books. Not that this book is bad; it's just not as good as their other works. This book is about average. While that is not bad, it is not as impressive as earlier works.

The first two chapters contain the same material I have seen in presentations by Wrox author Billy Hollis, so it was largely an overview I had already seen. The information contained in these chapters is very useful, however, if you want to get a good overview of how .Net and the CLR (Common Language Runtime) work. The same holds true for Chapter 5 (the IDE - VS.Net), chapter 6 (.Net class framework) and chapter 12 (.Net servers).

The Introduction to C# is an interesting chapter, but is little more than an overview. Written by Burt Harvey, it contains a similar bent as some of the chapters in the C# Programming with the Public Beta, which you should invest in, if you are serious about C# programming (it is the best C# book on the market, although Gunnerson's is a close second). My favorite code sample (downloadable) is the life simulation application (useless to web programming, but a neat little app).

The What's New in Visual Basic chapter is largely a wash for me. If you have not read the articles in VBPJ, or on MSDN, the VB article is a good overview. If sample code is your thrust, either wait for the VB.Net book, or download the code on ibuyspy.com, which contains much more useful code.

Chapters 7 to 10 are the meat of the book, delving into both web forms and windows forms applications. You will start with a decent overview of ASP.Net and end with .Net components. Chapter 11 is a nice intro to ADO.Net, but I am still waiting for a tome with deeper info on this subject. The final chapter has an interesting ASP.Net case study. As of this writing, the code is not available for download yet on chapters 10 to 13.

Finishing off, Appendix A is a bit weak, although it has a nice introductory framework reference. I feel that Appendix B has much more intrinsic value (how to use classic COM with .Net), but the topic is covered failry well on the net, so it is not worth the price of the book alone.

Currently, this is the best introduction to .Net on the market. It is also the only introduction to .Net. Considering the stage .Net is in, this is a great book. From a standpoint of what Wrox generally delivers, however, I would have to say this one is average.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good technical overview of .NET, March 13, 2001

By	Mark (Ottawa, Canada) - See all my reviews

Not having read much online information about .NET I was pretty happy with this book. There's a chapter on each of the major .NET features including the Common Language Runtime, C#, VB.NET, ADO.NET, ASP.NET, Winforms etc. It definitely removed a lot of the mystery of .NET for me. Previously all of the info I had read on .NET was vague generalities but this book really gets down to the actual details.

I would only recommend this book to people who are experienced with C++, VB and COM. The book was more technical than I expected and there is a good deal of code. One problem was the editing, there were several mistakes and the book had a bit of a rushed feel to it. Having 10 co-authors makes the style a little uneven and there are a few items that are mentioned by more than one author.

This is a decent technical overview of .NET. If that's what you're looking for I don't think you'll be disappointed.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Ok, for being first. Now its superseded, July 30, 2001

By	ws__ (Hamburg, Germany) - See all my reviews

This book has at least 10 authors and is fun to read for the first few chapters. Then I really got annoyed to read the same things over and over again and at the same time I missed some more in depth explanations. A lot is done with the framework itself. This is probably due to the very early delivery date of the book. Though I really enjoyed the C# example (game of life) I think you be better served with Hollis, Lhotka "VB.Net Programming". Also there seem to be quite a few other books out by now.