Professional ADO.NET 2: Programming with SQL Server 2005, Oracle, and MySQL

This book has a lot of good information. I found myself skimming forward just a little but there was still lots of good info to make me want to keep reading. I wish there was sometimes more explanation of why the author feels a certain way but all and all this is book worth owning.

There are a number of great things about this book, from my perspective. For me, perhaps the best chapter was the one on the custom ADO.NET provider. Even if you do not want to create a custom provider (and honestly, I do not think I will), reading through that chapter helps explain how the various standard interfaces work. In addition to covering ADO.NET 2.0 proper, the book covers specifically how you can use ADO.NET in very practical ways, interacting with SQL Server, as well as doing server side programming in SQL Server. Unlike one other reviewer, I appreciate the book covering these other areas. While the chapters on topics such as SQL Server server-side programming obviously do not cover all that a dedicated SQL Server book will, it covers most of what you need. I do understand how the term "Professional" in the title might lead a reader to expect one thing or another, but before I buy a book, I tend to read through it and determine if the publisher's idea of "Professional" matches my expectations.

I was really looking forward to this book, for both ASP.Net and WinForms development, since I really thought that's what the book was really about. Boy was I surprised. if that was all it had, I'd probably be very happy. However - that was just the tip of the iceberg! It has quite a wide focus, so, in some cases, it was kind of dificult to know where the book is going. However, The reader is somewhat warned right off the bat, that the book focuses mainly on the new features of ADO.Net 2.0, so prior knowledge of ADO.Net is expected, but I believe there is still a lot of text that covers a lot of the basics - just without a hand-held experience. For those so inclined, there's quite a bit of information concerning subjects like usinc CLR objects, TSQL Enhancements, Notification Services, Service Broker and Reporting Services, though it's definitely not JUST about SQL Server. There is quite a bit on the popular open source databases like MySQL and PostgreSQL, along with a chapter on Oracle, just for good measure. Many times, on different forums, I find questions concerning how to create a Database/table/etc, in code. Professional ADO.Net 2 has this plus a whole lot more about SQL Server server-side programming Going into the book, I knew there were quite a few new features of ADO.Net, but I really had no idea concerning the extent of new features. This book contains 584 pages of great information. Though what I'd consider a bit wordy, at times, I'll definitely keep this book around. If all you do is ASP.Net web page development, maybe this isn't the book for you - but if you do a lot more and really like 'nuts and bolts', and widening your experience, I think it's a go!