Rating: 
Summary: Very good book on ADO.NET
Review: I read through the entire book over the course of about a day and a half. It is nice to find a technical book that is enjoyable to read. This is currently the best ADO.NET book on the market. While there are a couple of areas where I believe some other books have provided better coverage (concurrency handling, for example), I know of no book that covers the whole of ADO.NET as well as this tome. The flow of the book is very nice. Starting you out with DataConnections, the book logically moves through commands, readers, adapters and DataSets, which it further breaks down into its constituent parts. The last few chapters cover updates, transactions, XML and a few other advanced topics. While the writing makes this book easier to read than the competition, I would not rate this as a beginner's book. If you are just getting into ADO.NET, and have not coded many data-driven apps, you will do well to revisit this book in a few months. The strongest section in this book is probably the extensive coverage of the DataSet. Learning how to manipulate data with a DataSet is core to success with ADO.NET. One of the biggest disappointments, for me, is the reliance on the System.Data.OleDb namespace. While certainly the most flexible, there should have been a few more SqlClient examples. In all fairness to the author, the SqlClient, OleDb and Oracle providers are covered in the Appendix. The author also warns you about differences between OleDb and SqlClient that you will have to take into account moving your code from one to the other. I also wish the author had taken a little more time setting up a web application, as most of the application development I do is for the web. As the models for Windows applications and WebForm applications are very similar, this is not a major beef. The highlight of the book is the bits and pieces the author has inserted into each chapter on the best way to code for performance. While performance is not the only aspect of application development, it is nice when you can write high performance code without creating an overly complex application. Most of the examples shown are as easy, or close to as easy, as the lower performing versions. As an additional plus, the CD that comes with the book has an electronic copy of the book. As this book will make a good reference, and it is hardbound, it is nice to know you can carry this information around without breaking your back.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent for beginner to intermediate developers too
Review: I resumed programming last year after 12 years of doing none. Eight months and a ten books later, I'm doing great. This is definitely the book I refer to most often. I'm amazed how time and time again, I discover a new gem in a chapter I had only previously breezed through....and I can see that as my skills progress, there's even more waiting for me to absorb. David's writing is excellent, the examples (in both VB and C#) are perfect, and the content is thorough.
Rating:
Summary: A must have for any serious developer
Review: I spent almost 8 months struggling with ADO .NET, bought a couple of books and just could't get it done efectively. Thank God for David Sceppa and this wonderful book. From the very first page you start getting what's going on, and how you must get things done, no goofing around, just a very simple explanation of the concept, and then an example in both VB and C#, which is great because I'm thinking of moving away from VB and get into C#. Every single object is clearly explained here, DataSets, DataTables, DataRows, Connections, Commands, DataReaders, DataAdapters, DataViews, and each of them's got all its proerties and methods thouroughly explained. Before reading this book I was builduing an application with ADO .Net and it had the worst, dirtiest code you've ever seen, after reading this book, my code has reduced itself about 60%, and is cleaner, more understandable and it will be much easier to maintain. There just can't be a better book to get up to speed with ADO .Net, it is really a must have.
Rating:
Summary: Really outstanding - thorough and very readable
Review: I'll just echo what many of the other reviewers have said - it's all here, in a very readable(and surprisingly enjoyable) book. Lots of examples, covers everything you would want to know about ADO.NET. Very well done.
Rating: 
Summary: Might be a good book, but I couldn't tell
Review: I've read the reviews and the praises for this book and I want to believe them, but I could just never get into it. It's thick at about 700 pages and I couldn't get the flow of the book. I know that some will dismiss my evaluation as ametuer and that's OK. I hope that it works for you. I found Shawn Wildermuth's "Pragmatic ADO.NET" much more palletable. I am keeping this book around for reference though. From the look of the other reviews I have a feeling that all of the information is there and, now that I've had a primer from another book, it will be more digestable.
Rating:
Summary: The best book on ADO .NET
Review: If you are not sure which book to buy on ADO .NET, this is the one. I read this book from cover to cover. The author has an excellent writing style; the book is both readable from front to back, and as a reference. It covers every topic, with multiple examples. In Web Data Grid Paging the book has six examples of paging:
§ Using Data Grid Paging
§ Cache in View State
§ Cache in Session State
§ Partial Data Adapter Fill
§ Query for a single page at a time
§ Cache in Database. The book contains a CD with the entire book on disk and sample code. Excellent book.
Rating:
Summary: The best book on ADO .NET
Review: If you are not sure which book to buy on ADO .NET, this is the one. I read this book from cover to cover. The author has an excellent writing style; the book is both readable from front to back, and as a reference. It covers every topic, with multiple examples. In Web Data Grid Paging the book has six examples of paging:
§ Using Data Grid Paging
§ Cache in View State
§ Cache in Session State
§ Partial Data Adapter Fill
§ Query for a single page at a time
§ Cache in Database. The book contains a CD with the entire book on disk and sample code. Excellent book.
Rating:
Summary: Sceppa is the MAN!
Review: If you do any real database access, you need this book. I bought Balena and Connell's book (I totally recommend both of them, incidentally, along with Les Smith's Add-Ins book), but this is at a different level. They have to address a broad audience. He addresses the Database developer. His stuff is clear, accurate (every app and code snippet works, I can't say that about everyone) and he can explain to every audience without being boring or too abstract. I wasted almost two weeks building an app, that once I got his book was finished in under an hour. David made me look really smart!
Rating:
Summary: They Don't Get Much Better
Review: In the .NET arena, there are a zillion books available. Many are rehashes of the documentation; many aren't worth the paper they're written on. This book isn't one of those. David Sceppa (who turns out to not only be an excellent writer, and a strong public presence on the support newsgroups, but a sincerely nice guy), has written a book that's actually useful. Not only does it include explanations of how ADO.NET fits together, David's book also includes explanations of how and why you should make choices about particular implementation details in your applications. The comfortable tone, the reliability of the information, and the graciousness of the author make this a top pick, from my perspective. (I must confess that I've found a few small details that have changed in the product since the time David wrote the book, and he's been incredibly responsive, when possible, to my correspondence. Not many authors take the time to respond immediately, if at all.) I wish there were more books out there like this one.
Rating:
Summary: This book Rules
Review: Learning ADO.NET is a fun, but non-trivial task. David has an amazing way of writing stuff that is cool and compelling. This book has helped me learn soo much that I have bought it for 3 of my friends b/c they always kept borrowing it and I needed it around. His whole idea of 'questions that should be asked' is great and it's straightforward enough for a beginner but also caters to advanced developers. I have most of the books that I could find on ADO.NET and this is by far the best one I've read.
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