Good high level descriptions, some details lacking.

I've found other Kauffman books to be very good with a lot of details, so I had high hopes for this one. Part of the problem is the book is detailing a beta product which is obviously still in flux (and was when the book was written).

Some of the new controls (like GridView) are covered in great detail, but one of the things I really found missing was a detailed comparison of the controls themselves. For example, The gridview allows you to specify the display text if no data rows are returned, but the datalist does not. I looked and looked for this info in the book but it wasn't there. I thought it would have been easy enough to add a line about the datalist saying something to the effect of 'if you use this control, you will have to handle emtpy result sets (no rows) yourself--the control does not have this ability inherently'...

But it wasn't there and I had to dig that info up from other sources. But all in all, if are new to 2.0 and need to have a lot of data interaction, this book will be helpful.

I wish the book covered stored procedures in more detail (they are mentioned but just barely). But that's more of a personal opinion than a knock on the book. If your app is like mine and uses a lot of sprocs, you'll find the book useful for the connection and the resultset, but the command stuff is mostly geared toward general SELECT/UPDATE statements.

Hope this helps, your mileage may vary!

Other Reviews

• This book wasted my time and totally frustrated me!
• Good high level descriptions, some details lacking.
• Fast Track for Seasoned Developers