Pragmatic ADO.NET
Most technical books use fairly limited vocabulary in their titles. The title of the book usually has an adjective (Advanced, Essential, Professional) and a name of some technology. Experienced reader come to expect certain level of content based on the book’s title. When I’ve picked “Pragmatic ADO.NET” as my first ADO.NET book, I’ve relied mostly on the fact that it was written by Shawn Wildermuth (had good Amazon reviews, published in AW .NET Dev Series and endorsed by Chris Sells). I wasn’t sure what to expect from that “pragmatic” adjective. Now that I’ve read the book I wish other authors would consider sharing their expertise by writing “Pragmatic” books.
As any sophisticated technology, ADO.NET offers many options to get the job done. Shawn shows which options are the most practical based on his extensive experience. Shawn’s book doesn’t teach you basics of .NET. It doesn’t teach you internals of ADO.NET or SQL syntax. Shawn refers the reader to other excellent books for details. What “Pragmatic ADO.NET” does well is to teach you about what’s important in ADO.NET from practical standpoint. One of the last chapters of the book includes a great list of “best practices” that summarize the recommendations explained though out the text. Very valuable.
“Pragmatic ADO.NET” is a quick read for someone who has the background with .NET and general idea of database programming. The book will not make you an expert in ADO.NET so if you’re looking for in-depth information this book isn’t for you. After finishing this book, expect to be referring to MSDN documentation and sample code when you work on your data access layer. But you’ll know exactly what details you’ll need to explore further and what parts you can safely ignore.
A few “to-improve” comments: 1) The book has too much long code listings for my taste. 2) Sometimes I felt I needed a bit more information about the reasons why Shawn recommends a particular solution or a best practice.
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