Professional ADO.NET with VB.NET

This is one book that combined it well! "Professional ADO.NET with VB.NET" is the text to grab, if you are a .NET programmer who wants to learn more about .NET data access technology.The book has a consistent practical approach to issues. It is full of grounded information, which would ensure that programmers execute their tasks with unflinching confidence.This book has a result-oriented outlook. Its authoritative analyses of cross-platform programming issues are flawless. All the important classes, (DataSets, DataAdapters, e.t.c.), which constitute ADO.NET received generous attention. However, all these expanded ADO.NET tutorials came at the expense of VB.NET, whose underlying parameters received little attention. Still, this is a valuable book to have.

This book is typical Wrox: it offers a comprehensive coverage of the subject in a very easy to follow fashion. It starts with several chapters covering the core ADO.NET classes - DataReaders, DataAdapters, DataSets. As the ADO.NET DataSet is a class with very rich features, this book discusses each facet of it - from the ADO Recordset-like generic disconnected in-memory data presentation with constraints, relationships to strongly typed DataSet, and finally to the built-in support of XML. The later chapters then introduces advanced features such as web services, SQL Server XML support, Performance, Security, etc.A minor inconsistency is that some examples in the book use Console Application interface, while most others use Windows Application, perhaps reflecting the fact of this being a multi-author book. But as far as learning ADO.NET is concerned, this is really not a issue.Oh, if you already owns its predecessor - Professional ADO.NET, which is written with C#, you might want to keep it and skip this one because it's mostly the same contents in different language (VB.NET). But if you haven't got either, it's definitely worth a very close look at this title.