Rating: 
Summary: Very Disappointing: A rewrite of the ADO documentation
Review: There's really not much to this book that isn't already in the Books Online, I'm afraid. I'm a professional programmer, I've been using DAO, ODBC, RDO, DAO for years. I bought this book looking for "best practices" for ADO. (Since there are so many ways of doing things, what are the drawbacks and advantages to each?) What I found was a lot of repetition of the help file, with occasional insights (how to optimize the Sort property, for example).As an example, consider this: One of the trickiest things with ADO is dealing with CursorLocation, CursorType, and LockType, especially when you're not aware what OLEDB provider your code will be using. Sceppa writes: "...What's a database developer to do? With a little experience and a lot of reading, you'll develop a good feel for which combinations are possible and which aren't... [Y]ou'll probably explore different options and experiment with code, and along the way you'll inadvertently discover the answers to questions such as these." Well, Mr. Sceppa, I didn't buy the book to be told to "experiment" and hope for a discovery; these are the answers I had hoped the book would contain. If you'd spent fewer pages repeating the method and property lists, you might have been able to include some of this information.
Rating: 
Summary: This book is really quite good.
Review: This book is actually great. Sceppa de-mystifies much of ADO; and, he is not afraid to point out where ADO remains a mystery. I have used the book a lot already and it has saved me time. One area that needs improvement is the coverage of the implications in using ADO for internet-based applications-- hence, the 4-stars and not 5. Overall, this book is well-worth the price to purchase and the time to read.
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