BOOK REVIEW

Beginning ASP.NET Databases Using VB.NET

WROX Press, Ltd.

John Kauffman, et. al.

ISBN: 1861006195

 

Category

Rating

LEGEND:

5=Excellent

4=Good

3=Standard

2=Fair

1=Poor

 

Overall recommendation

5

Quality of organization

5

Easy to read and navigate

5

Sufficient quantity of examples

5

Examples are error free

5

Reuse for reference

4

Quality of index

5

 

Summary Review 

 Accessing databases and datastores via the internet is becoming commonplace today.  This book gives developers the fundamentals of what databases are, how to connect to them with ADO.NET, how to access/manipulate the database information and, especially, how to present it in meaningful ways using ASP.NET controls and VB.NET.  I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking to grow beyond static-content web pages and begin development of data-driven web applications.

Detailed Comments 

 Written by a team of 10 professionals with different areas of expertise, this book provides a solid foundation for creating web applications that rely on creating, modifying, and displaying information accessed from an SQL database, although the source can be any data repository that has an OLEDB or ODBC driver written for it.  Filled with many rich examples, both in the text and in the hands-on exercises, the authors go beyond the "this is the code you need to insert" paradigm and explain what each section of code is doing, reinforcing lessons learned from earlier examples as necessary.  The exercises can either be typed in or run from source downloaded from the WROX Press website, both are error-free.  The book is full of tips and best-practice methodologies, with an entire chapter devoted to performance considerations.  The exercises were tested on students in a school lab and common mistakes are presented in a section of each chapter.   WROX Press also has multiple levels of support available to those who need it.  The book finally culminates in a "real world" online-auction application that covers all the bases and gives comprehensive substance to the theory and examples previously presented.

 

Reviewer:

William B. (Brad) Stevenson

Date:

9/16/02