Rating: 
Summary: RR2M - A new IT acronym = Rubbish Rushed to Market
Review: I agree with the majority of reviewers. This book is a dud that's rushed to market. I would wait for Murach to update his classic "Database Programming with VB 6" to VB.NET. Or equally good is Balena's seminal work on VB, which I am certain he will update for .NET.What the publishers don't understand is that rushing poor quality books not only hurts their reputation but the ability of the people that read their books. Poor knowledge = poor skills.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent book
Review: I am new to ADO.NET and this book has helped me conquer this part of the db universe as well. I read many of the chapters more than once because they're so full of tips, ideas and great information, but every minute spent reading pays off.
Rating:
Summary: MSMQ Intro
Review: I bought this book because of the MSMQ chapter (chapter 8 I think) and I was not let down. The whole book is great, even if I did buy it for the MSMQ material. I have definately gotten to terms with ADO.NET basics and that's on the plus side.
Rating:
Summary: Can't Belive This
Review: I can't believe I got this both books from this author. I was better off choosing MS Press. Unfortunately I am going to return them. Nothing there for serios database developers.
Rating:
Summary: Disapponting
Review: I can't believe other reviewers rating it 4 or 5. Few points
1. Not in depth coverage of ADO.NET
2. Too much MSDN tables and leanghty explanation of every method and properties.
3. Stuff doen't belong to ADO.NET
4. Some code doen't compile.
Rating:
Summary: Save your Money and wait for a better book
Review: I can't believe people are rating this book 4 and 5 stars. Much of the book is wasted space starting with the first chapter which is an introduction to .Net. The second chapter then introduces database terms and concepts that everyone but a beginner would already know. Chapters 3A and 3B do describe every database object that is available in .Net, but this is nothing that cannot already be found in the help or MSDN. Chapter 4 describes the IDE from a Database Viewpoint. Chapter 5 is exception handling. Chapter 6 tells you how to use Stored Procedures, Views and Triggers in SQL Server 2000. Chapter 7 is Active Directory. Chapter 8 is Message Queues. Chapter 9 is datawrappers - Here's the whole chapter. Create private variables and public properties for each field in the table. Chapter 10 is Data Bound Controls. Bottom line - don't waste you money. There is nothing here that cannot be found in the help or MSDN.
Rating:
Summary: ADO.NET explained
Review: I don't think I have ever read a book this easy to grasp. I'm delighted with the authors concise writing style and how easy it is to read. I've been reading the book, commuting to and from work and it has been a real pleasure. Now it serves as a reference book, no actually THE ADO.NET reference book.
Rating:
Summary: Unlike most other APress titles, this one is really poor
Review: I have several major problems with this poorly-done, rushed book: 1. It looks like about 1/4 of the content is pasted straight from the documentation, with very little if any change. This content is effectively useless, because the version in the product is constantly updated, and therefore should be preferred. 2. The organization is poor. The "stream-of-consciousness" mode doesn't structure chapters to put the important stuff together nor in a logical sequence. It's just one topic after another, dumped together. 3. Some of the sample code examples don't work. For example, on page 101, the first example mixes classes from the namespaces for OleDB and SQL Server. This doesn't work in real code. Obviously the example was cut-and-pasted, and not completely modified, and then not tested to see if it worked. 4. A lot of the sample code looks like it was generated by the wizards in Visual Studio and then just pasted in. All in all, look somewhere else for your ADO.NET introduction. While this book has a few in-depth topics that are currently hard to find elsewhere, the overall haphazard nature of the material is not worth wading through to get to the small about of good stuff.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Read
Review: I have to say that this is a pretty good book. Thomsen provides a nice balance between reference and short examples. I'm currently working on a .Net project and this book has helped me to understand ADO .Net concepts and the differences from old ADO. I can't give it five stars because I see room for improvement. I do think some of the other low ratings are a bit harsh. Compared to some of the recent Wrox .Net books this one is well worth it.
Rating: 
Summary: A rehash of the documentation - with less samples
Review: I recently read Dan Appleman's excellent 'Moving to VB.NET'.
Now that's a great book. It explicitly avoids the abvious path of retelling the product documentation, and it relies on the intelligent reader - novice or veteran - to refer to the .NET documentation. This book, published by Apress, which was co-founded by Appleman BTW, takes the opposite approach and pushes it to the limit - there are some cases where the explanations are copied directly, verbatim, from the .NET documentation (one example of many: page 84, description of Isolation levels). This is really annoying - 40 bucks for a copy-and-paste job ? However, if an author chooses to cut corners, but adds his own interpretation, or anything that makes the content worthwhile - the copy-and-pater job may be forgiven. I am sorry to say he does not add anything that could not be extracted (sometimes faster and easier) from a glance in the .NET Documentation. What about writing style ? dry and boring, filled with annoying exclamation points that only add to the feeling that you are reading something like a highschool term paper strectched over 500 pages that for some reason was published by a seemingly proffesional publishing house. Bottom line:
If this is what's available on VB.NET database development, read the documentation instead (even the samples are better).
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