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.
Rating:
Summary: Worth buying, but buy it used, and be familiar with .NET
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Full of great ideas
Review: This book was written by Dino Esposito who writes the ADO.NET column for MSDN therefore his credentials are undeniable from the beginning. Dinos' knowledge of the data-bound .NET controls are obvious from the beginning and shared in a way that encourages you to get in and try things for yourself. Inside of this book you will find a cookbook of wonderful recipes for using DataGrid and other databinding controls with ADO.NET and ASP.NET. I've been using the ideas found in this book to make my presentation of data more interesting, because I found that Dino has a real knack for creating display pages / grids / forms etc. that are different to the stuff you generally see around the place. The explanation given about how templated controls work will help you to have the deep understanding of these tools that is required to become a skilled ASP.NET developer. By implementing some of the solutions that Dino shows off in that book you will really WOW your workmates!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book, Great Examples
Review: This is a great book if you're already familiar with ASP.NET and ADO.NET. It does an excellent job of covering details of various controls, in particular the datagrid. Dino provides many great lessons on how the datagrid works. I gained valuable insight into the capabilities of this amazingly flexible control through this book. Its clear that Dino has spent a significant amount of time learning the ins and outs of ASP.NET/ADO.NET, you will benefit from his insights. My only complaint about the book is that the code snippets in the text are often left incomplete. You have to refer to the code on the companion CD to get the whole picture. But that's a minor point. I'd recommend this book to anyone planning on coding with ASP.NET/ADO.NET.
Rating:
Summary: Warning-Expert book, No VB.NET code, all C#
Review: This is not an intermediate book: The author knows what he is talking about. Perhaps he made it overly complex, he goes in to great detail and some of it is overkill. I started reading it and I knew that I needed to get another book that simplifies some of the subjects and I would use this book when I need to get to the gritty details. I was rather disappointed that there was no Visual Basic .NET code. The author clearly is a C# expert. I may change my review once I read the whole book, I am sure I will appreciate his thoroughness once I have a grasp of ASP.NET.
Rating:
Summary: What are your expectations?
Review: This is one of the few tech books I have returned. While it is well written (aside from poor editing in a few spots) this book wasn't what I was looking for, if you have Professional ASP.NET or ASP.NET Unleashed this book is going to pale in comparison, and you have absolutely no reason to waste your money here. If you are an experienced VB6 or classic ASP developer new to ASP.NET and ADO.NET and you want to get up to speed quickly with a bit of hand holding along the way, this may be the perfect book for you. Unlike the other two books I mentioned, this one is packed with screen shots and touches more on Visual Studio.NET (although VS.NET isn't required to make use of the content). Bottomline, this is a beginners book. I exchanged my copy for Microsoft ADO.NET core reference and found exactly what I was looking for in that title.
Rating: 
Summary: Extremely good book for Intermediate to Advanced readers
Review: This is quite a good book on real techniques to solve real problems. It's still going to be useful if you use for you're development third party controls and frameworks, you still will find valuable information inside. I wouldn't recommend it for the very beginner that wants a Learn-This-In-1-Hour book (and keep yourself in the ignorance :-)). For anybody else with certain degree of familiarity with the .Net environment, the book is going to be extremely useful.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't buy this book before you read it
Review: Usually M$ make good software and good books, but not this book. First of all, it should not be named as "Building Web Solution
with ASP.NET and ADO.NET", instead maybe it should named
as "Data Control or Controls in ADO.NET and Web application",
or just "a few advance topics in ADO.NET and Web application". The price of this book is $...but I think it only cover a
Few special topics of ASP.NET and ADO.NET. Anyway, it not a comprehensive of ASP.NET and ADO.NET as the
book name indicate.
Bottom line, It should publish like a white paper not a book.
Rating: 
Summary: Not the Dolce Vita
Review: With the exception of the incomparable Francesco Balena I sincerely believed that Dino Esposito's book would be no less worth of a meritorious award in the area of technical books. Moreover, in view of the fact that it preceded Balena's book, which is due out in May 2002, this was going to help me close the gap. It's no good trying to code in ASP.NET without having a clear understanding of VB.NET, and likewise, without having a good understanding of VB.NET, ASP.NET is limited. Dino's book promised to fulfil that promise, albeit by supplying first-hand examples in C#, a language that I am sure will find a worthy induction in the Museum of Natural Languages along with Eiffel, Prolog, ADA, RPG, Forth, Samlltalk, and soon I soon am certain Java and Javascript. However, I decided to go ahead and purchase the book anyway in the full belief that by installing the CD, which is supplied with the book, I would find examples in the more relevant of languages, VB. Indeed there is a wonderfully organised CD with all the chapters covered. However, the content is poor. So are the various examples and explanations peppered throughout the book. I will proceed to explain why is it that a book like Balena's (VB Programming) becomes a definitive classic in the world of VB programming - as I am certain VB.NET will become - and why a book like Dino's will be relegated to the specials shelf. For someone like me who codes 9-10 hours per day it is critical to have real-world examples to refer to. By real-world I mean thorny, complicated issues that crop up everyday. Not the rubbish that Que and Sams put out: how to paint flags or draw circles. That is Shayyet (as the Irish pronounce it). I need to re-program code that I have already written in VB and SQL Server in VB.NET and make it work for the web. By that I mean, tight, complex, and robust code. The examples and theory that I would be looking for would cover issues of addressing every aspect of a datagrid for example. Granted Dino covers that, but from a databound standpoint only. Now any programmer that is worth his salt will be the first to tell that you don't ever code databound. You always code unbound. I need clear cut examples that cover this type of coding, whether code-behind or via a class, in VB.NET/ASP.NET. None to be found anywhere in Dino's book. What you do find is a lot of mental-wanking on ADO, bound data etc. etc. But this is all very nice, but it does address life in the trenches. So you write to Dino, and sure enough the man is a gentleman, and he is polite and prompt, but the answers come back with , "I haven't done that...", or "I haven't tested that...", or "I don't know that...". Well, why not ? You have written a book, a high-level book, not a VB for Morons text, so where is the hard stuff that we are paying top dollar for. Frankly if I have to burn the midnight oil to find out the clues and figure out the complex coding issues, in other words, if I have to cover the hard yards, I don't need to pay Dino ...Australian Dollars for his book. The only reason I would pay that kind of money would be if Dino had already covered that ground for me. Another example: in my original code I used a third-party ODBC driver. Do you think there is even a hint of how to utilise a third-party ODBC driver in Dino's book ? Certainly not ! And of course, if you ask Dino, he will tell you very politely, that "he hasn't done that". What he has done is written a thesis on ADO/ASP.NET that addresses theoretical issues that you are never likely to encounter in the real-world. So if you are going to be presenting a paper on the subject get Dino's book. However, if you are going to be in the trenches, fighting for your professional life, get Balena on your side. Otherwise you will be shot dead in the mud.
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