Rating: 
Summary: Wasn't what I expected
Review: Well I have to say I was disappointed with this book. I was expecting to gain a lot of knowledge from this book on ADO.net which is completely different than ADO. Now yes there was a lot of coding mistakes in the C# line however if you notice in the review above everyone that has given this book a bad review said their language of choice was C#. This book is also highly pointed towards VB and you can tell that in chapter 1. But the coding mistake were pretty obvious and I have yet to see a book on coding without a few coding mistakes printed unless it is on it's second or third edition. Also you must set everything up exactly as the defaults specify. You must use the version of the nortwind database that comes with the book. The traditional one that comes with SQL server will not work. Reason is everything is hard coded in. However this is typical of any Microsoft book. I am a Certified Trainer and the manual they give you to use to teach new students with shows you everything hard coded in. I start my class usually saying I will show you this twice. Once the way the book shows you and then the right way. What I was disappointed about is the lack of explanation of things. For example why use a DataAdapter over a DataReader everyone one of the examples with the Adapter I could do with less code and more efficient with the DataReader instead. I still have yet to find an ADO book that explains this. Her coverage on the different properties method and events in this book I think have less information than just looking in the SDK for .net. I think that is what disappointed me the most. I can't even use this book as a desk reference. I find more information in the SDK on a specific method. I was really looking for explanations of these things and how they work and why should we use one over the other. One of the other things that really disappointed me is the way the samples were done. Many times I find myself writing code throughout the whole chapter and taking her word for everything through the whole chapter then you do not execute the code until the last page of the chapter. By then your wondering what was that code I typed in 40 - 50 pages ago and what was it doing? Another thing I really didn't like was all the WYSWIG VS.net tools examples. It is like using front page with a dummies book. Click here, Set this property to this and then run your code. Well ok, that fine and dandy but why did I just do this and what does it get me. Also any experienced coder remembers all the problems with their apps by using those tools in VS 6 what a nightmare trying to track down problems after using one of those. I would have rather had more text telling me why I was doing this rather than pictures and instructions. They last thing I think could really help is clean up the code. It is too long. An example of what I mean is in chapter 4. When producing messages on when the adapter fires its events.
The book shows you:
string strMsg; strMsg = "Beginning update...";
this.txtMessages.Text += strMsg; this could easily be one line of code or 2 if you insist on declaring the string variable. This is just a small example but it could really be cleaned up in a lot of places.
Rating:
Summary: Multitude of Mistakes
Review: Whilst I think the content ie Technical background given in this book is fairly good I must say the Code examples and explanations given are absolutely awful! Did anyone at Microsoft even check to see if these code examples ran ? If they said they did then they are lying. I've been doing .NET development seriously for about 6 months now and I believe this is the most careless book I have ever read. Stay away from this book until they fix the multitude of mistakes.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent book
Review: With the help of this book I was able to get to know most of the .NET design environment. It also helped me to connect windows and web forms to databases. This book may not help you to master ADO.NET but is an excellent resource to begin with ADO.NET. I did not have problems with the examples (I used only C#) and most of the examples worked for me.
Rating: 
Summary: Stay away from the light Carol Ann
Review: You have to know either VB of C# pretty well and be prepared to make guesses as to what "in" "after" and "your installation" mean. Sorry Becca . . . Give me FULL direction; Give me complete examples, and Tell me why I am doing this !! !! !! This will be the slowest "Step By Step" book you read. (My 4th in as many weeks). Maybe the next one will be better.
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