Networking Services Developer's Reference Library

Rating:
Summary: Same as MSDN library online or available on CD/DVD
Review: The series of books are pretty much is the MSDN library Jan 2000 Editional. This information is freely aviable on msdn.microsoft.com. The only good thing about it is that it comes with the MSDN Jan 2000 DVD so that you can install the whole library locally on your HD for quick access to library from your development environment. Otherwise the books are just a printout of the networking development section from the MSDN library.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent compilation of Networking Services
Review: This group of books is very useful because it provides two important things before starting developing with a new API: first it introduces you to the technology behind the API and then it shows you the functions provided by it.

Before starting using an API I always like to be in context with it, and for so nothing better than to read a book written by someone with experience in the matter, even if it is not updated (which is not the case with this one). The information given for each topic doesn't take a lot of pages but it's very rich in background.

The majority of the pages in this group of books are the enumeration of the functions related to each topic. For the ones who like to learn and program directly from the SDK, this last one is better, but that's not the purpose of the book. The purpose is to present you with the technology and then to just enumerate the functions provided, to program you will always need the SDK near you.

In my opinion, the author should also have written about WinInet (the base for IE) and the telephony API (the base for RAS). This wasn't taken in account when rating this book, because before buying it I already knew it's contents by the information in MS Press.