Understanding the .NET Framework

Rating:
Summary: Solid introduction to .NET concepts.
Review: This is a good book. As usual for Wrox titles, there are numerous misspellings and the editing is a bit sloppy. Also, the nature of Wrox books with their multiple authors lends to a somewhat inconsistent flow from chapter to chapter. However, these traits of Wrox books can be forgiven for the solid content "Understanding the .NET Framework" provides.

The book provides a breakdown of the major .NET topics including Web forms, Windows Forms, Data access, COM integration and Web services. Each of these topics is covered in its own chapter with helpful examples to illustrate the points covered. I found myself coding each of the examples in Visual Studio.NET and learning from each of them.

The examples are mostly complete, though the biggest challenge I had was getting the "Remoting" example in Chapter 6 to work. This was because of the need to associate a strong name with the assembly as well as register the assemnbly with the "sn" and "regsvcs" utilities. These required steps weren't obvious to me at first and weren't documented. Also, the authors state the examples could be built without VS.NET. In theory this is true, but impractical because of the associated files VS.NET creates on your behalf in projects.

Some of the highlights include the COM/.NET integration example, the Web Services example, the data type information from Chapter 2 and the excellent breakdown of the WDSL XML format in Chapter 7.

This book is not as high-level as some people might expect from the title. While "Understanding the .NET Framework" is an overview, it is still quite technical. Overall I found the book to be a great value for the purchase price.