software design

This has a number of good examples, real enough that you can use them as a stepping stone to your own programming.

This book is also something of a 'Rosetta Stone' by listing the equivalent VB.NET and C# code for exploiting ADO.NET.

Shortcomings? Well, the examples, as noted in many other reviews, require a level of expertise in VB.NET and/or C# that frustrates folks who just finished a language 'step-by-step' book. Sometimes the objects that connect to Access and SQL Server databases need a tweak for your particular machine, and the error messages generated may send you scrambling for the installlation notes.

Anoher caveat is that you can't run the ASP.NET examples with a standalone XP Home Edition system - it doesn't include IIS.

Nonetheless, a good book, perhaps one you'll want to keep as a reference.

First, this book assumes you are already familiar with either vb.net or c#.net. This may be the reason some others have had problems, as her examples require some familiarity. An example from early in the book is "Add a call to the RefreshValues procedure to the end of each of the CheckedChanged event handlers." If you don't understand that sentence, you will have a hard time getting through this. You will want to start with one of the vb.net books (I recommend Coding Techniques for Microsoft Visual Basic .Net by John Connell for starting out).

Otherwise, all of the sample code has worked fine and the errata listed on Microsoft's web site only has a few code sample problems.

So why 4 stars instead of 5? I think that she could have explained some of the topics and code a little more for those of us who are newbies to ADO. She seems to assume that the reader is familiar with ADO and is moving to ADO.NET and as a result does not explain some things quite as well as she could. One example of this is in DataTables. There is a table showing dofferent forms of the Tables.Add Methods. In the table, it shows 4 options and the text describing the entries in the table pretty much matches the table exactly. Then the examples only show 1 of the options and the remaining three options are never further explained or demonstrated.

The other problem I had was that there seems to be no point to the code. You will add a foreign key to a table and the code will add it and then display the name of the key you added. But then it is never used again in he program. There's a lot of how, but not very much why.

Still, I have used this book a few times now as a reference. It is the most complete book I have found so far in showing you how to do something in ADO.NET, so the technical content is very complete.

So, here's the summary. If you're already comfortable with VB.NET or C#.NET and especially if you are moving from ADO to ADO.NET, then I would recommend this book. If you are just starting with .NET programming, start elsewhere and then come back here. At the very least, it makes a good, complete reference to ADO.NET.

Have you ever been so deep into the trees that you cannot see the forest?

That is what this book does to you. It guides you in creating connections in many ways (code, explorer, IDE) same for adapters, connections etc. you understand each step, you build an application, but then you ask yourself WHAT DID I JUST LEARN? NOTHING!!!!

What is the relationship between this object and that? don't know.. where did this object come from? don't know..... on and on..

The examples are not "evolutionary" i.e. they don't start with a simple example and keep adding on to it. Instead each chapter has a separate example, you HAVE TO load it from disk, many of the concepts used in the example are foreign to you -- you are consistently promised to understand the missing links in other chapters-- and then you are expected to understand what you are doing when the example has one concept to teach you and 10 others that are foreign????!!!!!