Microsoft .NET Platform and Technologies

Rating:
Summary: Useful But Uneven Overview of .NET for Software Architects
Review: In 254 pages prolific Microsoft technologies author (more than fifteen titles) Curt Simmons and newcomer Ash Rofail do a quick 254-page survey of .NET.

Part I, 1/3 of the book, gives a quick overview of the development environment including the common language runtime, framework classes, web services, ASP.net, ADO and XML. Part II has one brief chapter on the seven key MS server products that provide the horsepower behind the applications developed for .NET. An appendix covers the basic of Windows 2000 Server and Active Directory.

The book is meant as an overview for IS managers and software architects. Developers may want to read another book for their first look; C# is not even mentioned. The book is a bit uneven with unexpected bursts of detail on, for example, XML code and later on SQL Server.

I found the book useful, after several months working on a .NET project, as a quick check on whether our contemplated architecture was taking advantage of all of the Microsoft technologies. I am not sure that I would have enjoyed the book if I had not been already fairly well read on .NET; but none of the other overviews that I have read covered all of the MS technology bases. Architecture mistakes are costly, so the $... is well spent.

Curt Simmons writes nicely so the book is a quick read.

Rating:
Summary: Relates the "Big Picture" but not much detail
Review: This book would be helpful if you need a big picture of Microsoft's product line under the .NET banner. It's brief and readable, not going into much detail under any section. In the first part, the authors cover the .NET framework but give rather skimpy coverage to ADO.NET. The second section describes the .NET Enterprise servers. Much of the material can be gathered from other sources, although the authors tie it together with some basic descriptions of e-commerce strategies, web services, and how the servers are employed. However I think the retail price is a bit high for the value added.

If you want to get a broad overview of .NET and don't need descriptions of the .NET Enterprise servers, I would suggest "Introducing .NET" instead of this book, since it provides more detail. If you don't care about the $$ but want an easy read pulling together Microsoft's strategy and product line, this book might suffice.