Rating: 
Summary: Great Book! Good book on ADO.NET
Review: I'm a ASP.NET database developer and this book is filled will many of the examples that I need.If you read or run the code on the CD while your read the book, you will learn at a very fast rate. Way to go Dino. Thanks for all the help.
Rating:
Summary: A great "real world" web data programming book
Review: If you are looking for a book that demonstrates some of the more detailed aspects of how to take advantage of ASP.NET and ADO.NET, then you should buy this book. I couldn't stop reading it after I noticed that many of the details that took me a while to figure out when developing my own apps were clearly explained. There are some great pieces of advice contained in these pages. Also, the examples are actually of scenarios you would implement; not just a bunch of the same tired code samples. Don't be fooled by the number of pages either. Once you start into the book you will notice its presentation is very focused and well thought-out.
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Summary: Extremely good book to start cooking up some ASP.NET
Review: If you ever wanted a handsdown, no nonsense approach to ASP.NET then go get this book! It's well worth the money. Dino walks you through most of the major controls e.g Repeaters, DataLists and DataGrids. Particular emphasis is given on how to make use of Databound controls, especially DataGrids. Dino makes learning functionalities like Paging, Editing, ItemCommands, Sorting, plus some extra features thrown in - like the chapter on developing your own super grid a breeze. The super grid that was introduced will surely be the template used by every .NET developer. A whole segment is dedicated to the intracacies of the DataSets and how to maximize its usage and the relationship between DataAdapters and DataSet. Those of you who are taking 70-305 tests might wanna take this book a look as well. As I've just completed the test and this book helped alot! As someone who has been developing ASP for awhile this book is indispensable in exposing new techniques as well as breaking old habits that goes with developing on ASP. For example, the usage of StringBuilders, rather than concatenating strings all over your code. Towards the end, there's some fair bit on WebServices and a final introductory chapter on how to write your own DataAdapters, both these topics by right can be a book in it self. So its definately a bonus. In summary. 5 stars mate!
Rating: 
Summary: Great book on data binding and more
Review: If you have not read Dino's articles on ASP Today, or MSDN, you have missed quite a bit. Dino is really a great writer, especially when it comes to data and performance decisions. Who better to write a book on using ADO.NET with ASP.NET. The whole first third to half of the book deals with binding data to various controls, primarily the data grid. This is a good thing, as the dataGrid control is the one you will use for most of your data reporting. You learn to page, edit and use templates with this wonderful control. The downside here is that the rest of the controls are largely fluffed over in the first chapter. Overall, this is not a bad thing, but a little more content on the repeater (which is by far the most flexible) and the DataList (which is also editable) would have been a nice addition to this work. In the middle of the book, you get into code reusability. The chapter loses focus at time, but deals with how you include different controls into your page, including custom user controls. From here, you learn about advanced data reporting, which may well be worth the price of the book alone. You head into deeper programatic decisions here. Fortunately, the DataGrid makes most of this a breeze. The final third of the book (part of section II and all of section III) puts wheels on what you have learned in the first 2/3rds. The chapters in this third deal with disconnected data, web services, interop with COM and exposing data to your ASP.NET applications. As I have stated, my largest beef with this book is the lack of more examples with the Repeater and DataList. Overall, I cannot be too critical here, as the DataGrid will most likely bare the brunt of your ASP.NET data programming work. It is a deep enough shortcoming to me, however, that I have to deduct 1 star. A couple more comments: 1. This book is written using C#. If you are a VB.NET developer, you can still use the book for the concepts, but understand the syntax will be different. 2. This is not a beginner's book. While I can see programmer's experience with ADO utilizing this book, esp. if they come from a language that uses braces (Java, JavaScript, C++, etc.), I would not recommend this as a first .NET book for an inexperienced programmer.
Rating:
Summary: This book deserves 6 stars !
Review: In depth discussion on most important features of ADO.NET and ASP.NET. Buy it and enjoy it if you are a professional developer. Don't buy it if you don't know anything.
It's a shame to give this book less than 5 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: worst Microsoft book I ever read
Review: It is disappointing considering its big title. I could not even finish the first few pages. Not useful at all to my web page programming.
Rating:
Summary: Don't buy it!
Review: It provids some codes which you can borrow from internet as well, that's it.
Not a good book to keep.
Rating: 
Summary: Disjointed Assortment of Good Ideas.
Review: Lets begin by saying that the book will not be of much use in "real" world applications, it is a disjointed assortment of good ideas. Additionally most of the content herein has been available as articles in MSDN the magazine at one time or another, and sad to say but true, better edited and enhanced in content. Most of the code in the book is incomplete and makes little sense... not so if you look at the actual code pages in the accompanying CD. A couple of good values included are two DataGrid classes that extend the functionality of the .NET platforms supplied DataGrid for web forms (System.Web.UI.WebControls.DataGrid). VERY LITTLE on updating data, submitting changes, working with updateable DataGrid objects bound to DataSet... page 233-251. Poor when you consider the book is 357 pages and IS titled Building WEB applications with ASP.NET and ADO.NET. That whole chapter (chapter 7) is only 40 pages long and it is mostly useless, only covering auto-generated commands for Update, Delete, Insert and skimming over deeper and more useful data updating tips including handling concurrency issues, failed updates, etc. I also have to add that in my opinion this book is a way for the author to show his ego as if to say "this is how smart I am and this is what I can do, it is up to you to figure out how and why I did it after reading through my included code". And I say this because his prose is at times hard to follow and the code in the pages is incomplete at best, making it unnecessarily complicated and if in an attempt to "cover" some very "basic" coding. Altogether an "ok" book, but if you get it please complement it with other more complete references.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect of Experienced ASP.NET Developers
Review: Looking for database development using Web? Have good experience with ADO.NET? Know basics of XML and ASP.NET? Want to write data-driven Web applications??
If any of the above is true, this book is for you. You may be disappointed if you're a beginner of ADO.NET and ASP.NET. If you read MSDN magazine, you may find lot of stuff familiar. Overall a good one to own.
Rating:
Summary: Its worth buying, but buy it used, and be familiar with .NET
Review: Pros: This book does a good job of describing ADO and its relationship to web controls. Covers caching, and interopability which I thought was valuable. Cons: (not really "cons", but maybe some short-comings): I wished it had more than a half-page section on the caching object along with some examples and real-world scenarios. I would also have liked VB along with the C# code. Finally, if the book is going to be about ADO & ASP.NET, then I feel it should have addressed the basics of getting data - creating a connection in .NET, and hooking it up to a sqldatareader. I already knew how to do that, however, other readers may not. They shouldn't have to go to another source to find out. I couldn't put this book down when I got it yesterday, however, there were times when I found myself thinking "that sounds great.. but HOW do you do that?.. where is the example? What if I don't want to code in C# ?".. Bottom line, its worth buying. Try to buy it used, and make sure you have a little background in .NET.
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