Microsoft ADO.NET 2.0 Step by Step (Step By Step (Microsoft))

This book is awful.

- It's sloppily written.

This book is filled with lousy code which "works" but is often incorrect. Some of this is just sloppy code (e.g. calling ToString() on properties which are already strings) but some of it is more serious, like the try-catch-finally blocks in the transaction chapter which attempt to trap SqlExceptions but won't catch the DbExceptions that are thrown on concurrency errors. Or how about when she says the FieldCount property of a DataTableReader returns the number of rows instead of columns (pp 143-4)? The whole book is filled with mistakes like this.


- The explanations are terrible.

I've read some of the other reviews where someone has claimed they learned a lot from this book. I don't mean to come off as a Mr. Smarty-Pants, but I don't think these people learned as much as they think they did.

The problem is that the author just shows you n ways to do thing x without any context whatsoever. Like all the examples where you spend a lot of time reading about different ways to add relations, constraints, etc. to DataSets. That's super but most people will never do that - you set that up in the DATABASE, not in your program code. The average person will use the DataSource wizard to generate all that code magically from a properly set up database. The author is just giving you a more verbose and hand-holding version of MSDN instead of really showing you how to use ADO.NET.

The chapter on transactions (chapter 5) is a great example of how she fails to explain anything. Look on page 114 and ask yourself why you add the insert commands to the transaction but then call the update commands. Why do you think you do that? Go ahead and play with the code, trying inserts, updates and deletes to see how brittle that code really is and how easy it is to get concurrency errors. What happens if you insert a row and delete a different one and then try to update? The author really hasn't given you the understanding you need to work past these issues but you can bet this kind of thing will come up in the real world.

I also hate when books about difficult, complex topics (threading, databases, etc.) make everything seem so sunny and easy when it's really not that way at all. This book does nothing to prepare you for common problems that will come up when you are trying to write your own database application.


- The code samples are not that great.

To begin with, the code is only available on the CD and not online. If you lose it, MS Press will happily send you another one (call MS press support) but why can't I just download it?

My real beef with the examples is how non-pedagogical they are. Most exercises consist of drag-n-dropping a component and/or typing a few lines, hitting F5 and clicking a button to see a boring result. Each chapter has its own test application so there's no unified application to build and develop. There's no continuity and no repetition to build mastery. The author never shows you how to play around and explore what you just did.

The database installation also leaves something to be desired. The installer doesn't recognize real SQL Server installations and doesn't provide the log file so if you want to install it elsewhere you'll have to install it on a workstation that does have SQL Server Express, copy the log file, uninstall it and then attach the files normally. Why didn't they just provide the log file to begin with?


- Summary

This book is terrible. Most people will only gain only a cursory knowledge of how ADO.NET works from reading this book and working through the examples. If you use Rebecca's code examples in a real application, your coworkers will hate you, your code will wind up on thedailywtf.com and you will get fired. It's also a complete rip-off at $[...]. If you cut out the duplicate C#/VB examples and long lists of properties and methods that you could get on MSDN you'd be down to about 100 pages. I'd highly recommend getting some other book.

As a final note, although the book contains examples in VB and C# and does an ok job of being language neutral, you'll still see VB idioms like New() and the author is clearly a VB programmer. If that gives you fits, you'll definitely want another book. Way to perpetuate the "VB programmers are idiots" stereotype, Rebecca!