Professional ADO.NET

I see that most of the complaints are about there not being any vb code. Granted, that is a reasonable complaint, but this book covered so much that other books haven't touched! I am amazed at how much I have learned from this book! I am finally excited about .NET instead of dazed and confused! Even if you know the general stuff, you need this book. I learned how to do things that I didn't know were even possible! This is the very first multi-author wrox book that I have given a good rating...you guys got this one right!

I liked it that each chapter is based around the most important parts of ADO.NET, so that I know exactly where to go to get the help I need. This makes it almost like a reference manual.It also has excellent coverage of XML with ADO.NET and XML Web Services. My copy is getting worn out.

Although there's a lot in this book that you could find in the documentation if you looked long enough, there's also lots of new stuff that I haven't seen anywhere else.Perhaps the reviewer who says it's just a rehash is talking about the ADO.NET Programmers Reference, which I've also got and it's really just a printed and commented summary of the documentation.Unless you have loads of time to scour the documentation and endlessly experiment, this is a great way to learn ADO.NET.

Let's face it, ADO.NET introduces some brand new concepts and design philosophies that even classic ADO experts are not familiar with. I found that this book provided me with a great ADO.NET foundation to build on. I have read many ASP.NET/WinForm development books and I am of the opinion that ASP.NET/WinForm developers will benefit from a book like this *before* diving into their ASP.NET or WinForm developement books.

I found this book to be very helpful. I already know ADO found this book to present information that is very helpful so that I can make use of the new features like the DataSet in ADO.NET.Doug Seven's chapter's were especially helpful.