ADO.NET Programming

Rating:
Summary: The best ADO.Net book in C#
Review: If you are looking for an indepth look at ADO.NET, specifically focused on the new data access ideas in the .NET framework, give this book a try. Most .NET books delve into the subject, but it is generally intertwined with ASP.NET or Windows programming. This book functions as a great reference book, but Feldman manages to provide interesting insights and commentary on what could easily be a dry subject, making it fairly readable for a technical book. Overall, this would likely be a great addition to
any growing .NET library.

One nice thing about this book are the examples. In most every example, various parts of the code are referenced with a number. This allows the author to be very specific about particular lines or sections of code, while remaining easy for the reader to follow. I really like this approach and hope other authors begin using it. In addition, Feldman starts off using simple console applications to illustrate the basics of ADO.NET. This allows the reader to focus on the nuts and bolts of what the code is doing, without having to understand new ASP.NET or Windows Forms techniques beforehand.

Later in the book, examples are given for how to incorporate ADO.NET into Web and Windows apps. As the author is self-admittedly not an HTML expert, most Web examples rely quite a bit on Visual Studio .NET's wizards and property settings. As a
developer who prefers to take the more manual approach, I tend to stay away from this method. However, if you are a Windows programmer who is diving into Web applications, it will likely fit you perfectly. I did learn some neat ways of using the wizards that I didn't know before. To be fair, Feldman does
explain the shortcomings of relying on the wizards and often shows how to tweak or manually generate code as well. He also points out quite a few gotchas along the way that can trip you up.

There are also some good chapters focusing on the interoperabilty between ADO.NET and XML. As a developer who feels XML is a bit overhyped, but still wants to be familiar with XML techniques, these chapters were very helpful. Although not overly detailed, they provide a starting point to help figure out areas of additional exploration. Also, I have a much better understanding of how XML schemas relate to strongly-
typed datasets.

Rating:
Summary: Very helpful ADO.NET primer and reference
Review: If you are looking for an indepth look at ADO.NET, specifically focused on the new data access ideas in the .NET framework, give this book a try. Most .NET books delve into the subject, but it is generally intertwined with ASP.NET or Windows programming. This book functions as a great reference book, but Feldman manages to provide interesting insights and commentary on what could easily be a dry subject, making it fairly readable for a technical book. Overall, this would likely be a great addition to
any growing .NET library.

One nice thing about this book are the examples. In most every example, various parts of the code are referenced with a number. This allows the author to be very specific about particular lines or sections of code, while remaining easy for the reader to follow. I really like this approach and hope other authors begin using it. In addition, Feldman starts off using simple console applications to illustrate the basics of ADO.NET. This allows the reader to focus on the nuts and bolts of what the code is doing, without having to understand new ASP.NET or Windows Forms techniques beforehand.

Later in the book, examples are given for how to incorporate ADO.NET into Web and Windows apps. As the author is self-admittedly not an HTML expert, most Web examples rely quite a bit on Visual Studio .NET's wizards and property settings. As a
developer who prefers to take the more manual approach, I tend to stay away from this method. However, if you are a Windows programmer who is diving into Web applications, it will likely fit you perfectly. I did learn some neat ways of using the wizards that I didn't know before. To be fair, Feldman does
explain the shortcomings of relying on the wizards and often shows how to tweak or manually generate code as well. He also points out quite a few gotchas along the way that can trip you up.

There are also some good chapters focusing on the interoperabilty between ADO.NET and XML. As a developer who feels XML is a bit overhyped, but still wants to be familiar with XML techniques, these chapters were very helpful. Although not overly detailed, they provide a starting point to help figure out areas of additional exploration. Also, I have a much better understanding of how XML schemas relate to strongly-
typed datasets.

Rating:
Summary: Manning Publications comes out with another gem!
Review: Rarely do I buy a book from a new publisher (I am a Wrox guy), but seeing very few books on this subject, I decided to chance it. Turns out that this publisher (and author) seems to be very good, and I bought two more books from them...sometimes you just have to chance on a new publisher. Ok, now let's get down to my review of this wonderful book.

The book starts off by giving a short but informative review on past data providers, and what ADO.NET has brought into the mix. The author then goes on to say what he plans on getting through in this book, and the basics of ADO.NET. The basics are explaining the classes, the DataReader, and the idea of writing database independent code. The next few chapters start explaining the DataSet, and what we can do with it. The book continues to then explain about bound controls in both WinForms and ASP.NET. Finally, the book finishes off with a discussion on XML and ADO.NET. After all this, there are still some extra chapters which are very useful, and are basically ideas that had no place in earlier chapters. Now all of this was packed into less than 500 pages, and the author has done a great job in that respect!

ADO.NET by itself is a very boring subject, but it is one of the most important things out there (for n-tier, client/server, and web programmers etc....hmmm almost everyone). When I bought this book (last April...sorry for the delay in the review), there were very few books out on the subject, but even now, I think I would still get this book. The author explains what we need to know for ADO.NET, and the writing is not dry...which makes for a book that you can actually read cover to cover! One great thing about the chapters, is that they are all short and sweet...chapters were rarely longer than 8-12 pages...which in my opinion makes for easier reading. The code is very easy, and although there is only 1 example on VB.NET (this is a C# book), the code is easily converted to VB.NET.

Another interesting thing about the book is that it is unlike other books that focus on a specific type of database, or on bound controls! Most of the examples in this book are console based, and are database independent (using Interfaces). This is a different idea on what I have seen in past books, but turns out to be a really cool idea. First, the generic database idea is an excellent idea, and this book allows people using any database (SQL Server, Access, Oracle, Sybase etc.) to understand how to wok with ADO.NET. Also, console based applications, although you will probably never have an application like this in the real world, it still serves a purpose: Makes example smaller, easier to read, more comprehensive, no need for Visual Studio.NET (yeah, you can still make a GUI and web forms without Visual Studio.NET...but it's a pain), and finally because it teaches you ADO.NET...and by learning ADO.NET in the simplest of ways (console based), you can apply the knowledge everywhere!

I did have one major fault in this book...that is Case Studies! To be fair to the author, he did say that he had no time to put a Case Study into the book, but I believe had there been 1-3 case studies, this book would have been complete! The chapters on XML were brief, but packed with info...I do suggest a full book on XML and ADO.NET though, since there is a lot more than just this. This XML issue is not a fault, just a suggestion for those that want to do more with XML. Also, there was one small chapter on .NET Remoting with DataSets...and again to be fair, a whole book...and many are out there that are dedicated to this subject. I guess it just would have been nice to have one more chapter on Remoting...or one on WebServices...and explain Remoting VS WebServices.

To summarize, this book was well thought out, and explained what it needed to...ADO.NET. After reading this book, as long as you know C# and SQL (which are requirements, the author does not give a primer on this...thankfully :) you should be able to write an application connecting to ANY database and use all the things you learnt about ADO.NET to manipulate that data. If you really want to learn ADO.NET, I would suggest this book over any of the other books out there right now.

Rating:
Summary: Good for Advanced-Beginners...
Review: The book is excellent if you're just beginning to use ADO.NET and really want to know how it works. I wish I had found it two years ago but unfortunately, that's all it does. Error handling is particularily weak - comments like "Once an exception has been caught, you can step through the error collection and
look at each error in turn" are not very helpful. He gives very little guidance about what to do with errors once you've found them.

In order to fully understand the book, you also need to have a good working knowledge of basic SQL already. And he definitely has a bias towards manual coding things and skims over the GUI and the Designer.

Rating:
Summary: The best ADO.Net book in C#
Review: This is one of the best ADO.Net books available. This is not regurgitation of Microsoft's documents. The author really knows the subject and explains all technical aspects very well. The technical coverage is done in a simple, and easy language. This could be done only when the author knows the subject. The chapters are also short and up to the point. There is no point in writing a chapter of 100 pages of worthless info. The short but tech loaded chapters make the book interesting to read. It is a gem of a book. Grab it