Programming .Net 3.5: Build N-Tier Applications with Wpf, Ajax, Silverlight, Linq, Wcf, and More

This book offers a great introduction to the basic .Net 3.5 Framework. While I consider it something of an overview book, it does offer enough meat to get you into the various subjects like WPF, LINQ, ect. Useful working code samples are offered for each subject. I highly recommend this book for the experienced programmer who wants to learn what .Net 3.5 has to offer.

If you are familiar with programming books you should make it well worth your while to get to know Jesse Liberty asap. He's an amazing writer that puts books out in warp speed time. Content is always good, writing is clear and concise and he is a joy to read. With 'Programming .NET 3.5', Mr. Liberty does it yet again. My only complaint with this book and a rare one that I make is that this book is TOO short. With only 14 chapters, this book needs more content, even with 450+ pages. Newer focus is on WPF, AJAX, Silverlight, LINQ, WCF and the like but some older content would be nice to have as well. If you need to learn about .NET 3.5 you would be remiss not picking up this text to get up to speed and working right now. You get this book you will NOT be disappointed!! McKinnon Overview 01. Into to .NET 3.5 02. XAML Inro 03. WPF Basics 04. Applying WPF 05. Introducing AJAX 06. Applying AJAX 07. Introducing Silverlight 08. Design Patterns with .NET 3.5 09. LINQ 10. WCF 11. Applying WCF 12. Introducing Windows Workflow Foundation 13. Applying WF 14. Applying CardSpace ***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Some programming books suffer from the Three Little Bears syndrome: they're too detailed or not detailed enough, too conceptual or not conceptual enough, too much of a tutorial or not enough of a tutorial, and so on. The authors of Programming .NET 3.5 solved this problem by establishing clear goals for their book and by combining the insights of a senior program manager at Microsoft (Jesse Liberty) with those of a chief technology officer at an application development firm (Alex Horovitz). Programming .NET 3.5 takes an integrated approach to Windows Presentation Foundation for Windows applications, Silverlight for delivery of rich internet applications across platforms and browsers, Windows Communication Foundation for web services and service-oriented architectures, Windows Workflow Foundation, CardSpace for user-negotiated identities, and ASP.NET/AJAX for rich client applications. The book's goal is to show how these elements can leverage Model-View-Controller, n-tier, and other long-celebrated architectural patterns while augmenting object-oriented programming with new declarative programming capabilities. The book is divided into three parts: Presentation Options, Design Patterns (characterized as "an interlude") and The Business Layer. Presentation Options provides an excellent introduction to eXtensive Application Markup Language, the declarative syntax for desktop-based presentations. This part of the book shows how to build a rich desktop application and later a real-world web-based AJAX-enhanced application using tools that move fluidly between XAML and managed code. Additional topics include an introduction to the Microsoft AJAX library and to the rich interactivity of browser-deployed Silverlight applications. The Interlude on Design Patterns examines how .NET 3.5 promotes the use of architectural patterns that have only been celebrated with lip service until now. The Business Layer part of the book shows how to replace ADO.NET classes with Language Integrated Query (LINQ) and defines SOA and shows how to implement SOA with Windows Communication Foundation. Most important, this part of the book presents a complete example of a WCF application and a complete workflow application, and also shows how to apply CardSpace for establishing identity. Liberty and Horovitz should be commended for setting and then meeting the clearly spelled out goals for their book. The book is well organized and well written, and it follows the time-honored principle of moving from the simple to the complex. Assuming you've installed .NET Framework 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008, then this book just might be the very fastest way to bring yourself up to speed on Microsoft's latest.

I just finished reading Programming .NET 3.5 from O'Reilly. The book, published in August, is an overview of the latest .NET Framework revision. You'll get an introduction to the topics that have been introduced along the way that include technology from .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, and the latest version; .NET 3.5. Also included are libraries such as ASP.NET MVC and Silverlight. You can easily pick up this book and enjoy the introductions to technologies such as Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation, ASP.NET MVC, and Silverlight. Each of these topics are presented in a way that will be familiar to .NET developers. New developers, without experience in .NET, will be able to take a lot away from this book. It certainly will do more for the developer who already has a .NET background, no matter how brief it is. That said, if you only pick up the book for the introduction to each technology, you'll be missing the best that this book has to offer. Unlike most technology books these days, this book explains the topics within the context of best practices and real world scenarios. For example, prior versions of ASP.NET did not promote decoupled architectures. In fact, it made it difficult to achieve them. With the technology available in .NET 3.5, modeling and implementing proper architectures is encouraged and facilitated by the framework. This book will show you how that works in .NET 3.5 and introduce you to the technologies at the same time. I highly recommend this book. It will be on my desk for easy reference for my .NET projects in the future.

This book is very different than most of the book I have purchased on .NET because it covers XAML, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Silverlight, Ajax, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Workflow Foundation (WF), CardSpace, as well as the industry standard patterns Microsoft has incorporated in these technologies. None of the technologies are gone into in great depth, and I thought I would be slamming them for that, but I can't because they tell us upfront they don't do that. I also can't do that because they did a great job of making this a roller coaster ride through the .NET 3.5 Framework. Meaning they point out some really cool stuff in one part of it, and then speed off to another part of it to show off the cool stuff there. I would suggest you have somewhat of a background with .NET 3.5. You don't have to, but it helped me because I could easily place the book's topics into the proper context. The authors do a good job introducing some of the key patterns found in the .NET Framework. It is the same as the rest of the book, they look at one cool view of the pattern and then speed off to the next one. The code samples shown in the book are available on line, and they are well organized and very usable. All in all I have enjoyed reading the book. I would recommend this book to anyone who has been trying to get a grip on all the different features in .NET 3.5. They will get a cool glimpse into each area.