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Review
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Reviewed: April, 2003 |
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Reviewer:
Chris
Wallace |
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Reading books . .
.
There I was reading along in this book, not realizing
it was so late at night. Never would I spend that much time with a romance novel or
with those books that spend weeks on the New York Times best seller list.
This was a technical book -- specifically a .NET book. How could I put it
down? Well, some I could and I do. You know the kind that put you to sleep
while the author drones on wanting more to hear him self talk than to talk
with his reader. Sometimes it seems that they want to impress rather than
impart. Not so with this book.
I just felt comfortable reading ADO.NET Programming. It
was as if the author was sitting across from me and we were chatting about a
favorite subject – that’s how this book makes you feel while still getting
the job done. The author truly cares about your success. When I read a book,
I usually read every word, including the preface, acknowledgements, notes
about the book – everything. If you do (most don’t), you will gain insights
into the writer (like his sense of humor), who the writer turned to when
writing, and even get a better sense of the tone of the book than the
marketing blurbs on the back cover. Try it with this book the learn more
about why the author can be trusted.
A relaxed approach to writing isn’t enough when your
goal is to understand a tough new technical subject. Here the author does
not disappoint either. There is plenty to come to grips with in this subject
and this book covers it thoroughly and with just the right amount of depth.
This book is billed as a practical guide to database programming in C# and
.NET.
Who gains from this book . . .
You will gain the most from this book if you are just
beginning to understand database access using ADO.NET, no prior experience
is needed. If you come to ADO.NET with a wealth of ADO experience, you will
need to rearrange some of your established thought patterns; this book will
help you with that too. It is helpful for you to have some working knowledge
of C#. Thankfully the author does not waste your time explaining the .NET
Framework or attempting to teach you C#, as you find in so many other books.
He is true to the topic, giving all attention to ADO.NET and specific
related technologies.
Complete coverage . . .
The coverage of prior data access technologies is quick
and may be skipped for those more experienced. Next you will dive right into
a high level overview of ADO.NET and XML, even the more experienced should
not skip this part.
Code samples are provided in the book in SQL Server;
however, code may be downloaded in SQL Server, Oracle (without the new
managed provider), and Access.
You will find detailed coverage of the .NET data
providers and specific examples for SQL Server and OLE DB. Don’t miss the
chapter on writing database independent code. Determine for yourself when
that might be the best approach after reading the authors recommendations.
Complete treatment is also provided Connections, Commands, the DataReader
and an entire section of the book devoted to details of the DataSet and
another section on DataBound Controls.
As you might expect, the author gives a considerable
amount of time to XML and rightly so. What you might not expect is a
discussion of SQL Server and XML. Not really a part of ADO.NET you say. Yes,
that’s true; however, this is another example of how the author believes
that you not only may be interested in this but that it is important for you
to know and contrast the differences with using ADO.NET for XML rather than
SQL Servers abilities.
An author less interested in your health and well being
might leave it at that. Not so here. The author included an entire section
on Useful Extras. This adds discussions on Connection Pooling, Reading
Database Information, Distributed Transactions, Using ADO Recordsets with
ADO.NET, seven Appendices, and the catch-all of “Recommendations and
Advice.” Try finding those topics in most of the other books on ADO.NET.
So what’s not to like . . .
Setting up the sample code from the publisher’s
download site drove me crazy, since the utility that was intended to make it
easy to set up required a trusted connection for the loader to continue.
Without such, the entire process unceremoniously stops without a hint of
help. Oh, the best laid plans.
The author and publisher provide an online forum for
discussion about the book. You can guess what has constituted several issues
– the sample code loader. Luckily, the author has been quick to respond to
questions (you realize that authors don’t get paid for this extra help to
you). He has provided a simple backup zip file of the database which can be
downloaded from the errata page online. Restoring the database from a backup
was painless. All is well now.
There must be an extremely long time from writing to
publishing. The author says that he wrote this book using the pre-release
version of .NET. Fortunately, you will not find this to be a problem; the
book was kept up to date and the code works with the released version of
.NET.
You won’t find a long list of corrections to the
published work. An errata page is available from the publisher, but it is
blank. I found a few minor errors, which can be expected; these are listed
within messages in the Author Online message board. The book has been very
well written, edited, and published – very different from the long lists of
errors found in many books. The book’s code samples are shown with numbers
matching easy to read and follow notes about the code which tie directly to
descriptions of what is happening and why.
The bottom line ___
This is a great book, one I recommend (and those who
know me know that I don’t recommend many). Oh so many books, so little time,
so little money – make them work for you. Get this book to obtain a firm
grounding in ADO.NET and the insight and recommendations from someone who
has been there. You need to be familiar with ADO.NET and this book is the
perfect beginning with just enough advanced material to keep you going.
Where’s my pillow, I know it’s late, but I think I’ll reread a couple of
chapters . . .
Chris Wallace, of Wallace Business Solutions, Denver, Colorado, is a software consultant in Microsoft technologies,
emphasizing Visual Studio in SOA-OOP/N-tier
architectures using .NET. He has extensive IT experience working in the US and Europe.
His goal is to deliver complete application development solutions to meet real
world business needs. He holds a Masters degree in Computer Information
Systems, is a private pilot, and is a worldwide adventure traveler. When not
solving the world's business problems, he can be found on the
slopes of the Colorado Rockies with his Siberian Huskies. Chris has been the Leader of
the Denver Visual Studio User Group
since March 1996. In July, 2004, he was honored by his user group members
with a "Life Time Achievement Award" in tribute to his many years of service
to his user group. He is a business and developer technology speaker,
and a
Microsoft MVP. For questions and comments,
contact
Chris Wallace
directly. |
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