E
Earl
I've been on a mission this past year to move from VB6 to .Net. I'm
fortunate(!?) not to have the big catalog of some long-time VB developers,
although I have some CE apps that have to be entirely rewritten in CF. A lot
of what I develop has to be written for the PPc, so I knew I would be
looking for information in .Net, ADO.Net, CF -- and SQL Server.
So in the spirit that others might benefit from my journey, here are my
observations. Having been a tech writer many years ago (and a page designer
before that), I give these reviews with the caveat that I know how difficult
it is to write technical literature and also how difficult it is to pull
together all the aspects of a book. Thus I'm not going to give much about
any specific errors or bugs, but a general feel for the book and how it
helped me.
I will also give the caveat that I've never read ANY book that didn't give
up some useful bits of information -- no matter how bad that book might be
otherwise. Final caveat is that I'm not there yet -- I'm still learning much
as I develop and I'll still have many questions here. But I don't see my
opinions changing on the books I'm reviewing here.
The following list is in no particular author order:
Introducing Microsoft.Net 2nd Ed (note: the 3rd Ed is out now), David S.
Platt
As its title implies, its a great book to get you started in the .Net way of
thinking. There are some examples, but that is not really the focus of the
book. Touches briefly on all areas of .Net. I wish I had read this book
first.
VB.Net, Matthew McDonald
Strange, I've never seen any reviews of this book, and I got it for $10 at
the half-price bookstore, but its chock-full of information and examples.
The book is aimed at developers moving from VB to .Net, so it was right up
my alley. If you can find it, buy it.
Visual Basic.Net, Matt Tagliaferri
Another out-of-the-mainstream book (spell that c-h-e-a-p) with some good
stuff in it. If you are interested in GDI, this might get you kickstarted.
Also gave me some intro to the datareader and datasets.
Visual Basic.Net Database Programming, Evangelos Petroutsos, Asli Bilgin
I've seen this book slammed in a few reviews, but I feel that's totally
undeserved. This is a very good book for those just starting with ADO.Net.
Its deep enough, it gives you a lot of great examples, and is fairly well
illustrated. I do have some minor heartburn as follows. Some of the examples
that required the Command Builder to be used did not show those in the code
example. Literally, those examples would not run (I'm thinking this was one
of the places that William Ryan straightened me out). Next, a few of the
illustrations were actually screen shots of the code that were too small to
read (altho in fairness, you have a CD to pull the code up in front of
you -- I'm not much on using the CDs unless I do not understand the written
word). Finally, the layout of the book is kinda goofy as regards the
DataReader (you have to look in a couple of different areas where the
material should have been pulled together). I have about a dozen pages
tabbed for future reference, so that may give you some idea that despite my
misgivings about a few errors, I still find the book very useful.
Microsoft ADO.Net, David Sceppa
In the lingo of the 20-something crowd, this book is "the bomb". I'd read
reviews of how good this book is, and its reputation is well-deserved. I
have not finished the book yet, but after several chapters (and some peeks
ahead into the "Questions that should be asked more frequently"), I can see
already that I'll feel more secure in my knowledge of ADO.Net once I'm
finished. I'm thinking that this is probably the only book I've ever paid
full-price for. If you were to be stuck with the task of creating a robust
application with just any 3 books, this would be 1 of the 3. More about this
anon.
..Net Compact Framework, Craig Morris, et. al.
One of the first books I bought and should've been one of the last. Examples
all in C#, and since I had no .Net experience at the time, I didn't spend
much time with it. Fairly lightweight tome, but I'm hanging on to it and
intend to get back to it
Microsoft .Net Compact Framework Kick Start, Erik Rubin, Ronnie Yates
This book helped me out tremendously, not only with the CF, but on how to
work with the datagrid and datatables. I do not claim to being there
completely, but using some pieces of this book in conjunction with answers
from the afore-mentioned William Ryan in the forums, I can at least
visualize most of the concepts I need to pull things together.
Microsoft .Net Compact Framework, Andy Wigley, Stephen Wheelwright
I have not finished this book. Examples all in C#, and highly technical
(these guys might be wound a little too tight, and might want to check out
www.moosehead.com). I'm counting on this to fill in the holes in my
technical knowledge once I have the nuts and bolts down.
C# Text Manipulation Handbook, Francois Liger, et. al.
I found this book also at the half-price book store and oh I love it as a
reference! This little gem has helped me tremendously with casts, parsing,
math manipulations, numbers to strings, strings to date, you name it. Even
if you write only in VB.Net, the examples are easy to read/convert. This
book will save you hours and hours of frustration with casting issues. Buy
it.
Professional SQL Server 2000 Database Design, Louis Davidson
How did books about SQL Server land on the .Net list? Frankly, you will miss
more than half the journey if you try to learn.Net in a vacuum without some
knowledge of SQL Server. This book is so language-agnostic, it is an
excellent resource. Written in a very user-friendly conversational tone, I
have been enjoying it tremendously -- while learning much along the way.
Troubleshooting SQL, Forrest Houlette
I found this book totally by accident. It deals exclusively with
troubleshooting SQL statements. Heck, while I realized the depth of SQL, I
never envisioned that someone could write such a "troubleshooting" book that
was language-independent. Using this book in conjunction with "The Practical
SQL Handbook", "SQL Queries for Mere Mortals" and "Database Design for Mere
Mortals" will make you much more confident in your SQL abilities.
SQL Server Black Book, Patrick Dalton, Paul Whitehead
I really appreciate the "black book" series of books. They helped me
tremendously with VB and got me started with understanding C++. But for some
reasons, this particular black book has not been as helpful. Its just as
big, has just as many examples in it, but for some reason, I feel
disconnected and the descriptive material feels lightweight. This book will
remain a reference for me, but I'm somewhat scratching my head about some
topics in the book.
ADO.Net Step-by-Step, Rebecca Riordin
Of all the tech books I've bought over the last 4 years, this is the only
one I've ever returned and I did that last night. Because I consider books I
buy to be such a repository of reference material, I struggled with even
returning it, but something about the book just did not fit my way of
thinking (which cannot be considered a knock on the author at all!). I've
read some reviews about the book that it has errors and buggy code, but I
did not get past the 2nd chapter nor even crack the CD, so I'll not lay that
out as an issue either. I think that maybe part of the problem was that I
had some knowledge already and clunking around with a "step-by-step" manual
was like having someone eager to drive a racecar but their instructor wants
to show them how to use the shifter. This book probably has a target
audience that I didn't fit in.
Visual Basic.Net, Richard Bowman
One of my bargain purchases that was a dog. If the author's name is not on
the cover of the book, that should be some sort of warning right there.
Actually, there is some good material in the book, but its so covered up
with screens on every page, you have to spend a lot of time digging for what
you need. An excellent example of how NOT to design pages for tech books.
Save your money.
If you were only allowed 3 books to learn how to write both desktop and
Compact Framework database apps, my choices would be:
Microsoft ADO.Net, David Sceppa
Professional SQL Server 2000 Database Design, Louis Davidson
Microsoft .Net Compact Framework Kick Start, Erik Rubin, Ronnie Yates
fortunate(!?) not to have the big catalog of some long-time VB developers,
although I have some CE apps that have to be entirely rewritten in CF. A lot
of what I develop has to be written for the PPc, so I knew I would be
looking for information in .Net, ADO.Net, CF -- and SQL Server.
So in the spirit that others might benefit from my journey, here are my
observations. Having been a tech writer many years ago (and a page designer
before that), I give these reviews with the caveat that I know how difficult
it is to write technical literature and also how difficult it is to pull
together all the aspects of a book. Thus I'm not going to give much about
any specific errors or bugs, but a general feel for the book and how it
helped me.
I will also give the caveat that I've never read ANY book that didn't give
up some useful bits of information -- no matter how bad that book might be
otherwise. Final caveat is that I'm not there yet -- I'm still learning much
as I develop and I'll still have many questions here. But I don't see my
opinions changing on the books I'm reviewing here.
The following list is in no particular author order:
Introducing Microsoft.Net 2nd Ed (note: the 3rd Ed is out now), David S.
Platt
As its title implies, its a great book to get you started in the .Net way of
thinking. There are some examples, but that is not really the focus of the
book. Touches briefly on all areas of .Net. I wish I had read this book
first.
VB.Net, Matthew McDonald
Strange, I've never seen any reviews of this book, and I got it for $10 at
the half-price bookstore, but its chock-full of information and examples.
The book is aimed at developers moving from VB to .Net, so it was right up
my alley. If you can find it, buy it.
Visual Basic.Net, Matt Tagliaferri
Another out-of-the-mainstream book (spell that c-h-e-a-p) with some good
stuff in it. If you are interested in GDI, this might get you kickstarted.
Also gave me some intro to the datareader and datasets.
Visual Basic.Net Database Programming, Evangelos Petroutsos, Asli Bilgin
I've seen this book slammed in a few reviews, but I feel that's totally
undeserved. This is a very good book for those just starting with ADO.Net.
Its deep enough, it gives you a lot of great examples, and is fairly well
illustrated. I do have some minor heartburn as follows. Some of the examples
that required the Command Builder to be used did not show those in the code
example. Literally, those examples would not run (I'm thinking this was one
of the places that William Ryan straightened me out). Next, a few of the
illustrations were actually screen shots of the code that were too small to
read (altho in fairness, you have a CD to pull the code up in front of
you -- I'm not much on using the CDs unless I do not understand the written
word). Finally, the layout of the book is kinda goofy as regards the
DataReader (you have to look in a couple of different areas where the
material should have been pulled together). I have about a dozen pages
tabbed for future reference, so that may give you some idea that despite my
misgivings about a few errors, I still find the book very useful.
Microsoft ADO.Net, David Sceppa
In the lingo of the 20-something crowd, this book is "the bomb". I'd read
reviews of how good this book is, and its reputation is well-deserved. I
have not finished the book yet, but after several chapters (and some peeks
ahead into the "Questions that should be asked more frequently"), I can see
already that I'll feel more secure in my knowledge of ADO.Net once I'm
finished. I'm thinking that this is probably the only book I've ever paid
full-price for. If you were to be stuck with the task of creating a robust
application with just any 3 books, this would be 1 of the 3. More about this
anon.
..Net Compact Framework, Craig Morris, et. al.
One of the first books I bought and should've been one of the last. Examples
all in C#, and since I had no .Net experience at the time, I didn't spend
much time with it. Fairly lightweight tome, but I'm hanging on to it and
intend to get back to it
Microsoft .Net Compact Framework Kick Start, Erik Rubin, Ronnie Yates
This book helped me out tremendously, not only with the CF, but on how to
work with the datagrid and datatables. I do not claim to being there
completely, but using some pieces of this book in conjunction with answers
from the afore-mentioned William Ryan in the forums, I can at least
visualize most of the concepts I need to pull things together.
Microsoft .Net Compact Framework, Andy Wigley, Stephen Wheelwright
I have not finished this book. Examples all in C#, and highly technical
(these guys might be wound a little too tight, and might want to check out
www.moosehead.com). I'm counting on this to fill in the holes in my
technical knowledge once I have the nuts and bolts down.
C# Text Manipulation Handbook, Francois Liger, et. al.
I found this book also at the half-price book store and oh I love it as a
reference! This little gem has helped me tremendously with casts, parsing,
math manipulations, numbers to strings, strings to date, you name it. Even
if you write only in VB.Net, the examples are easy to read/convert. This
book will save you hours and hours of frustration with casting issues. Buy
it.
Professional SQL Server 2000 Database Design, Louis Davidson
How did books about SQL Server land on the .Net list? Frankly, you will miss
more than half the journey if you try to learn.Net in a vacuum without some
knowledge of SQL Server. This book is so language-agnostic, it is an
excellent resource. Written in a very user-friendly conversational tone, I
have been enjoying it tremendously -- while learning much along the way.
Troubleshooting SQL, Forrest Houlette
I found this book totally by accident. It deals exclusively with
troubleshooting SQL statements. Heck, while I realized the depth of SQL, I
never envisioned that someone could write such a "troubleshooting" book that
was language-independent. Using this book in conjunction with "The Practical
SQL Handbook", "SQL Queries for Mere Mortals" and "Database Design for Mere
Mortals" will make you much more confident in your SQL abilities.
SQL Server Black Book, Patrick Dalton, Paul Whitehead
I really appreciate the "black book" series of books. They helped me
tremendously with VB and got me started with understanding C++. But for some
reasons, this particular black book has not been as helpful. Its just as
big, has just as many examples in it, but for some reason, I feel
disconnected and the descriptive material feels lightweight. This book will
remain a reference for me, but I'm somewhat scratching my head about some
topics in the book.
ADO.Net Step-by-Step, Rebecca Riordin
Of all the tech books I've bought over the last 4 years, this is the only
one I've ever returned and I did that last night. Because I consider books I
buy to be such a repository of reference material, I struggled with even
returning it, but something about the book just did not fit my way of
thinking (which cannot be considered a knock on the author at all!). I've
read some reviews about the book that it has errors and buggy code, but I
did not get past the 2nd chapter nor even crack the CD, so I'll not lay that
out as an issue either. I think that maybe part of the problem was that I
had some knowledge already and clunking around with a "step-by-step" manual
was like having someone eager to drive a racecar but their instructor wants
to show them how to use the shifter. This book probably has a target
audience that I didn't fit in.
Visual Basic.Net, Richard Bowman
One of my bargain purchases that was a dog. If the author's name is not on
the cover of the book, that should be some sort of warning right there.
Actually, there is some good material in the book, but its so covered up
with screens on every page, you have to spend a lot of time digging for what
you need. An excellent example of how NOT to design pages for tech books.
Save your money.
If you were only allowed 3 books to learn how to write both desktop and
Compact Framework database apps, my choices would be:
Microsoft ADO.Net, David Sceppa
Professional SQL Server 2000 Database Design, Louis Davidson
Microsoft .Net Compact Framework Kick Start, Erik Rubin, Ronnie Yates