Not for the ADO novice but for those with a little hands on.

For approx. 1 year, I had been utilizing ADO.NET in a limited way. It confused me the switch from ADO to ADO.NET and I wasn't that strong on ADO to begin with, so I dug my feet in about learning the rest. Then one faithful day I hit a wall in my abilities with ADO.NET. The trusty READER wasn't going to bail me out and only VIEWING data in a DATAGRID wasn't going to cover my hiney either. They wanted to modify the data. They wanted to delete data. They wanted POWER....
(Shaking in fear...) Really LEARN ADO.NET????!!!!

I looked through many ADO.NET books and found this one for me was easier to read. He gives a indepth explaination on each of the components in their respective chapters. While he only utilizes the OLEDB and SQL connections, the explaination he gave regarding using OLEDB over ODBC was convincing for me to switch.
I learned more about the DataAdapter than I had thought existed and now enjoy playing with ADO.NET. It really has empowered me.

While the code he gives is not for complete programs, but to accomplish the mission he is discussing. So, when you read the code. Don't expect to be building a program. Expect to be learning how to accomplish a task by looking at the section of code that handles it.

I recommend this book to any one who has a limited experience with ADO.NET and feels that it is time to expand their knowledge to fully embrace the power of .NET

(I know this recommendation comes at the closing of a chapter. The ADO.NET has been replaced by its 2.0 version. We are still currently programming in Studio 2003. If the 2005 book meets the level of this - you will learn from it!)

Other Reviews

• MCTS Visual Studio 2005
• Not to be confused with Rebecca's Riordan's
• Not for the ADO novice but for those with a little hands on.
• Very complete. C# & VB.net code included with samples