Beginning VB 2008 Databases: From Novice to Professional

One of my friends is a database programmer and has been after me to learn how to do SQL as well as update my VB to 2008. While I'm quite familiar with VB6, the 2008's methodology had caused me some headaches. Combine that with a lack of experience with SQL and you've got one frustrated programmer. This book is excellent in that it gives you very direct and easy to follow instructions on how to access the SQL engines without assuming that you are an expert with VB2008. This is the third book I've purchased to learn VB/SQL and it's the first to actually explain WHY things are done and not just throw out the commands and assume you understand how things work. It also has a number of very good examples with explanations for the SQL queries that are being used. While it's not an SQL tutorial, it is quite effective enabling the reader to start working with SQL almost immediately. If you're not a programmer and don't have experience with VB, I recommend buying the previous books in the series that explain the environment and the quirks of the 2008 implementation for VB. At the same time, if you're new to SQL but are familiar with VB, this is the perfect book to start with. You'll be doing SQL queries in no time and will quickly gain the skills to integrate SQL with your VB environment.

If you need help in moving your older VB database programing skills into the .NET world this is the book for you. This book will teach you all the basic skills you would expect to know in working with ADO.Net and SQL Server. This book may not be for a very beginning student because it assumes you understand the basics of database programming. This book may not be for the advanced professional because this book is not heavy into theory, just enough theory to get the task done. It is more of a 'how to' book showing how to do basic database programming tasks in the ADO.NET way.

The book is ok as a first step in database programming, you need to cover other areas before you finish from scratching the beginning phase... I finished it in 10 days and found that it only introduced me to Linq. I should have gotten a more advanced book.

This book was more than I expected. The layout of the book makes it very easy to grasp the concepts the author is presenting. He explains a topic and then there is a simple exercise to reinfoce the concept. It is basic and doesn't go very deeply into the topics, but that's what I liked. I liked having a few hundred page book instead of a 1000 or 1500 page monster. Eventually you may have to get another book that goes into more detail on the topics listed, but for starting out learning about database/application interaction I thought it was a very good book.