ADO 2.0 Programmer's Referenc E

I cannot recommend this book enough. It is actually a joy to read - a reference book - imagine that! It contains everything I needed/wanted to know plus a whole lot more. It is the book that Microsoft should have shipped as their own.

As the title suggests, it is a reference to the features in ADO, but the authors have done a good job of presenting a primer of ADO's more useful features. I was disoriented at first by how reference material was weaved together with extended textual explanations of concepts, but the format works. I ended up reading most of the book cover to cover rather than just looking up topics that interested me. And an extensive index goes a long way in making the material accessible for reference. Most of the code snippets are in VB or VBScript, but the authors used pseudocode a lot, so developers using any language will find the material helpful. The Introduction and first chapter take about 25 pages to give an overview of ADO. If you're new to database programming and ADO, I wouldn't start here; there just isn't enough to get you up to speed. But if you have a couple of database apps under your belt, this section serves as a good refresher and introduction to what's new in version 2.0. The next five chapters cover the ADO object model, each of the main objects, and the various collections, all in a fair bit of detail. The lists, tables, and technical detail got to be a bit tedious, but programmer's reference guides aren't meant to be riveting reading. These chapters serve as a good reference guide to the ADO architecture. The last three chapters are worth their weight in gold. Chapter 7 gives a good overview of remote data access and ADO. I was disappointed that ADO MD (multidimensional) received nary a mention, but otherwise the material is surprisingly up to date, such as by mentioning XML several times. Chapter 8, Data Shaping and Recordsets, is a gem. I suspect that relatively few developers have worked with data shapes yet, even with the data environment features of VB 6.0. And chapter 9 provides plenty of information about tuning your application's ADO performance. While I consider this book to be a mandatory addition to any Windows database programmer's library, it has a few annoying flaws. For one, it could have stood one more careful edit to catch typos and grammatical slips. The authors take on a patronizing tone at times, patting readers on the head. And there are ads for other Wrox Press titles scattered throughout the text, disguised as helpful notes about where to go for more information. Nevertheless, I'm glad to have this book at my elbow as I tackle data access with ADO. Highly recommended.

Overall this is a great reference book. I have been developing asp database applications using ado for over a year, and this book is the reference I turn to the most. There are few real world examples, but that's not what a reference book is for. There are code snippets illustrating the programming methods for the major techniques, and the sample code (on web site) is valuable. Overall, it's a great reference.

This book, together with the downloads available from the Wrox website, constitute an invaluabe resource. I highly recommend it to anyone starting to use ADO in ANY LANGUAGE.

You should really buy this book if you want a refrence guide to all properties and methods of ADO 2.0.The book also does a good job at explaining how to use the various methods depending on what you as a programmer intend to use the method/property for.As a bonus you get one chapter on RDO - Microsofts "new" way of dealing with data on the web. This chapter does not only cover RDO but also XML and was for me a very good first look on these technologies.The books also takes up Stored procedures, Datashaping(Herarchial recordsets) and how/when to use them in your applications.As a finishing touch of this excellent book from Wrox Press there is a chapter on performance when opening and closing recordsets, using sql text questions or stored procedures, when to use different types of cursors, cursorlocations locking shemes and much more..This is definitly the book to buy about ADO.Sincerely /Hans Sixhöj Microsoft Certified Solution Developer