Rating: 
Summary: A reader from NJ
Review: A good book for experienced VB.NET / ADO.NET programmers but if you were, you wouldn't be buying a book on the subject. Maybe not intentionally, but there are many important details omittted from the program examples. Many will not work because of the missing information or assumption that "you should know this" or it was overlooked.
Rating: 
Summary: Very good book
Review: After wasting 60 dollars on VB.net step by step, I read this book. It's a really good book on ado.net database. Doug lowe and anne prince new book on asp.net will be consider over asp.net step by step by me in future. Authors have done a extremely good job.
Rating:
Summary: Great for the small business owner
Review: As a small business owner who has just moved up from Access to SQL Server, I needed a book that would get me up to speed on VB.net programming quickly so that I could start creating the applications I need for my business. Like every small business owner I realized that I would never be able to afford the technical help to get what I needed done, so I was going to have to learn to do it myself. I have a small library of books now, including many of the very fine Wrox books, but I found the Murach series to be the best so far for me: a business owner who needs to learn programming geared towards business problems quickly. The other books seemed to spend an exorbitant amount of time on non essential issues, and I bogged down in creating non relevant examples. This book went right to the heart of the matter: creating a usable interface to my sql server database and explained it all very clearly. I have learned more in the last two days with this book than in the last month with the other titles. In fact, this book will probably provide clarity for those other books on my shelf and allow me to understand their concepts more clearly as well. If you are like me: a small business owner, not a professional programmer, this book is for you. I have spent over a $1,000 in books in the last month. I would have saved myself a lot of money had I bought this first.
Rating: 
Summary: Book is highly overrated
Review: Author(s) did not check the software for the database very close.
They only used one version of MSDE to test before releasing the book. The web site for the book gives you no alternative if you
can't attach the books database to MSDE. Without this the
book has no value unless you manually create and enter the data you need yourself. Worst Murach book ever.
Rating:
Summary: Very good, well-witten treatment of ADO.NET
Review: Bottom line: at $49.50 list price (and much less from Amazon and elsewhere) this book is a bargain that will get you up to speed much more quickly than the more typical $60 high-tonnage book on the same subject. Save yourself money and shelf space. HIGHLY RECOMMENTED. Authors Prince and Lowe do a first-class job of introducing you to ADO.Net as well as allowing you to delve into the more advanced concepts. The book follows the typical and very effective Murach style of a left-hand page of explanatory text on a specific concept and a right-hand page of code and/or illustration that is linked to the text on the facing page. I find this sort of presentation really helps me focus on the current topic. Also, eliminating the necessity of page-turning to find an accompanying example makes for a better learning experience. The book is about 550 pages long, excluding appendices and index. There are probably less text than the typical book on this subject, and that's a *good* thing. The authors were highly selective in what they included. For example, you don't have to wade through 300 pages of "what is a form" and "what is an event" before you get to useful information.
Rating: 
Summary: Where's the beef?
Review: I found the book poorly written and researched. The title is ADO.NET Database programming. What is offered is 5 chapters on DB design, 2 on ADO access and a couple more on XML. The author states he uses an older version of MSDE ( version 7) and discounts MSDE 2000 and Access databases. The latter being non-enterprise or desk top databasing. The meat of chapters 6 and 7 for ADO failed to explain the internals of use of the ADO objects. I returned the book and deemed it a failure. I've since bought Microsoft's ADO.NET Core Reference and found that it answers my questions.
Rating:
Summary: In a class by itself!
Review: I have been working through your excellent primer on ADO.NET, which is the first such book I have seen that makes real sense to me, because it actually focuses on something close to real-life database programming. In addition, the writing is clear, and the program samples are amazingly bug-free. (One of the most infuriating problems a person can encounter in learning a new programming environment is an author's buggy code.) Most of the .NET primers that I have seen have been dreadful, which may be one reason why this technology's penetration has been unexpectedly slow. VB.NET Database Programming with ADO.NET is in a class by itself, I think.
Rating:
Summary: A reader from NJ
Review: I have been working with VB and Database programming since VB version 3.0 and Access 2.0. I now regularly teach classes in VB.Net and database programming. In fact I have authored several computer books myself. I can say with no hesitation that there simply is no better book on the topic. ADO.Net is significantly different than ADO. Therefore database programming with VB.Net is much different than VB 6.0, and few books do much to clarify the situation. This book is simply the best, if you don't have it, get it right now!
Rating:
Summary: OUTSTANDING
Review: I have been working with VB and Database programming since VB version 3.0 and Access 2.0. I now regularly teach classes in VB.Net and database programming. In fact I have authored several computer books myself. I can say with no hesitation that there simply is no better book on the topic. ADO.Net is significantly different than ADO. Therefore database programming with VB.Net is much different than VB 6.0, and few books do much to clarify the situation. This book is simply the best, if you don't have it, get it right now!
Rating:
Summary: In a class by itself!
Review: I purchased this book after I was so impressed with Murach's APS.NET programming with ADO.NET. I found the ASP.NET book contained a wealth of information that included ADO.NET.
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