Definitely worthwhile

I struggled for a long time to wrap my head around the new data access methodology of VB.Net. DataConnections, DataAdapters, DataSets, DataTables, DataGrids, DataViews, etc. It was all very confusing. This book divides up each of those components and shows how they stand independent of each other. Most helpful was how it introduced the dataset without using any database. Only when the concepts of the dataset were understood, did it tie in the dataset together to a database source. That approach is what got me past the confusion that was holding me back.

I didn't like the way the authors prefer to set everything in code instead of using the property pane and the designer but I got past that. Also, generally the code examples were more to demonstrate the principles being explained than to actually implement a technique one would like to do in a real-world application. That's not such a bad thing, but sometimes it's nice to have that too. I recommend this book for someone that needs to get the fundamentals of ADO.Net.

Other Reviews

• Good book for getting a handle on DB access in .Net
• Definitely worthwhile
• Clear book that achieves its goal
• Good RDBMS book
• Takes the mystery out of ADO.NET