Product Description

ADO.NET is Microsoft's latest data access technology, and, as an integral component of the .NET framework, is far more than simply an upgrade of an existing technology. ADO.NET is a large set of .NET classes that enable us to interact with data sources, manipulate data, and communicate with other applications and Web Services in entirely new ways.

This book provides a wealth of information about the ADO.NET. We describe the features and how to use them, as well as providing advice and explanation that will enable you to use ADO.NET effectively. The code examples are concise, and demonstrate how to use a specific techniques rather than how to build entire applications.

This book covers:

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1932415 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 950 pages

Amazon.com Review
If you're planning to write applications for Microsoft's .NET framework and want to work with Extensible Markup Language (XML) or otherwise provide access to databases within the .NET architecture, you need to understand ADO.NET. While ADO.NET Programmer's Reference isn't meant as a tutorial, it's far more than an object reference. True, you can use it to discover the members of the many ADO.NET classes, but that's not too valuable when your development environment provides that information. More useful is this book's extensive collection of commentary and examples. If you're interested in--to cite one example of the hundreds in this volume--the Fill method of the DataAdapter object, you'll find two pages of prose explanation on how Fill behaves in different situations (including potentially weird ones, like when column names conflict). Following those two explanatory pages, 10 pages of parameter documentation, code samples, and further commentary provide lots of details, increasing the likelihood that you'll find what you need.

Helpfully, the authors have taken care to include code samples in both C# and VB.NET, though once in a while a snippet appears without adequate commentary in either code comments or nearby prose. A potentially bigger problem is that the authors worked from a late preliminary version of the ADO.NET, which introduces the possibility that not all of their advice will work under the gold version. Still, this book does good work as an aid to programmers under pressure to produce well-constructed ADO.NET applications. --David Wall

Topics covered: The design and implementation of the ADO.NET environment, in the form of a class reference with lots of commentary and examples. Object representations of data, as well as of transactions, permissions, and queries, are all covered with respect to C# and VB.NET. Providers covered include OLE DB, ODBC, and Microsoft SQL Server 2000.

From the Publisher
This book is aimed at experienced developers, who have some experience of ASP or general development with Microsoft technologies, or experience of programming within the .NET framework. It is not aimed at beginners and does not cover general programming techniques or the basics of programming languages.

Primarily, it is intended as a reference for .NET developers who are utilizing the ADO.NET classes in their applications.

About the Author
Adil Rehan works as an independent consultant for a Fortune 500 company. He has been involved in several books in different roles. He has been actively involved in design and implementation of enterprise Internet enabled solutions for different clients. He can be reached at adilrehan@yahoo.com.

Dushan Bilbija works as a consultant with clients in areas from academia to software development to wireless communications. He specializes in Visual Basic, Enterprise Applications, Application Integration, Database Development and System Architecture. He can be reached at dbilbija@pantheoncorp.com.

Fabio Claudio Ferracchiati is a software developer and technical writer.

Jan D. Narkiewicz is Chief Technical Officer at Software Pronto, Inc (jann@softwarepronto.com). In his spare time Jan is Academic Coordinator for the Windows curriculum at U.C. Berkeley Extension, teaches at U.C. Santa Cruz Extension and writes for ASP Today.

Jeffrey Hasan is a technical architect specializing in Microsoft technology at LiveMarket, Inc. He has extensive experience developing N-Tier applications. He has written numerous articles on application development, and is a contributing author to several books by Wrox Press. Email Jeff at: JHasan85@hotmail.com.

John McTanish has written many control systems and various other application and drivers, mostly for PC hardware. John currently works as a team leader developing public safety software for computer aided dispatch systems used by Police, Fire and Ambulance vehicles.

Jon Reid is the Chief Technology Officer for Micro Data Base Systems, Inc.His primary current activity is developing database tools for the Microsoft.NET environment.

Matt Milner works as a Technical Architect for BORN in Minneapolis where he designs and builds Microsoft solutions for clients in a variety of industries. Matt's primary focus has been using Windows DNA architecture and he is excited about the move to .Net and all the powerful new features.

Naveen Kohli is an independent software developer. He's been developing ranging from Chemical Reactor Optimisation to N-tier web applications. He has a vast experience in writing middle tier components for extracting data from data sources like SQL Server, Oracle, Exchange Server and Access database.

Paul Dickinsons most recent resting place involves developing information management systems for laboratories.

Customer Reviews

Excellent reference
Many reference books are little more than laundry lists of methods, namespaces, etc. This book does an excellent job of explaining what it covers. It has many good code examples that follow its explanations. For anyone who already has gone through an introductory book on ASP.NET, and who has any background in classic ASP, this book should be a welcome addition. It goes into detail on many additional topics that you don't find in many introductory .NET books, for example Transactional processing. Most books give cursory glances at transactional processing and data relations. This book dives into these topics. For serious programmers who want to get beyond the basics of ADO.NET programming, this book is worth the money, and the time that you will spend on it. This is the best book, at the moment, on ADO.NET programming, either as a reference or as a tutorial.

Excellent as a reference
Wrox lists this book as a "Programmer's Reference". In a reference I look for detailed information and code samples demonstrating usage all of which should be more extensive than what can be found in the help files or online API. This book succeeds very well as a reference providing a great deal of information that you will want to have nearby while you are coding. The book starts off with a description of ADO.NET which I found to be the weakest part of the book. This section doesn't quite put all the pieces of ADO.NET together in a meaningful way. The remainder of the book is excellent. Each of the key ADO.NET classes (DataSet, DataReader, DataAdapter, etc.) and their constructors, properties, methods and events are discussed in detail with code samples in both VB.NET and C#. Each key class or concept (data relationships, transactions, XML mapping, etc.) is given a chapter in the book. The explanations are much more useful that what you will find in the online help files. Besides covering SQL and OLE, the book also covers the ODBC classes which are not documented in the help files included with VS.NET. In a reference the index is important and here the index is good although some entries seem to be off a page or two. If you are looking for an in-depth introduction to using ADO.NET you will want to look at other books. If you need a detailed reference book then this should be your first stop.

Excellent Reference
As a reference book, I can say its excellent, it gives very good examples of nearly every method and property for the subject, of course it needs experience with ADO, its not for new developers need to learn ADO.NET , also it doesn't teach general preferred or strategic ways of doing things, it's a REFERENCE like the book name reflects, and its an excellent reference in one book.

Bassam