| Pragmatic ADO.NET Data Access For The Internet World by Shawn Wildermuth is one of the better ADO.NET books on the market right now. Even if you already own one or more ADO.NET books, I'd strongly suggest emailing your manager asking for permission to purchase this one. |
| | | The author has a conversational writing style that combines detailed explanations of somewhat complex items with terminology and analogies that are very easy to understand. Very few of the authors that I've run across recently have this talent. Developers will quickly and easily digest the information only to find their level of expertise in ADO.NET rise after reading just a few chapters. Don't be surprised when they come into work the next day talking about ADO.NET on a much higher level. | | |
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| | | Pragmatic ADO.NET is a well organized, consistent, and thorough book on ADO.NET. Each chapter follows pretty much the same formula: a brief introduction to the subject dealing with real world topics, easy to follow code samples, paragraph long descriptions of properties/methods that affect the application, and optional ways of accomplishing the same task. This format gives the developer a complete look at the target subject enabling them to make good design decisions. | | The author spends a great deal of time discussing virtually all facets of the DataSet object. This includes filling it with query results, inserting/updating data and potential problems you'll run into, stored procedures, XML integration (lengthy discussion), merging datasets, use of data tables, and a whole lot more. Plus, the ADO Migration Strategies section in the appendix is going to come in handy if you aren't familiar at all with ADO.NET but have experience with ADO. ADO.NET is considerably different from classic ADO and this section will help you understand those differences and how to accomplish similar tasks from ADO in ADO.NET. It might be a good idea to quickly browse this section first before going through the regular chapters if for no other reason than to familiarize yourself with ADO.NET object names and where they fit in with classic ADO functionality. After reading the normal chapters, you could reread this section in it's entirety. | | Chapter 11 Scalability and Performance is a must read. It is primarily a best practices chapter that discusses coupling components in systems, connected versus disconnect data, caching, data readers versus data sets, and application layer design decisions. I think it would be a good idea for all of your developers to review the chapter and discuss it's contents so that everyone is on the same page. | | The only item I thought was weak in the book was it's graphical representations. The publisher's graphic arts people didn't go the extra mile to make Pragmatic ADO.NET look like the top notch book that it is. Hopefully, Shawn's next book will get a little more attention from these folks. As I mentioned before, this is a strong book and is well worth your hard earned cash. You won't be disappointed. |
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|  | Robbe has been a Microsoft MVP in C# since 2004. He is also the co-founder of EggHeadCafe which provides .NET articles, book reviews, software reviews, and software download and purchase advice. |
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