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ADO.NET: From Novice to Pro, Visual Basic .NET Edition
by Peter Wright

Publisher: Apress Buy it Now! 

ISBN: 1590590600
Format: Paperback, 384pp
CD: NO

ADO.NET is NOT ADO on .NET framework! It is not a natural evolution of ADO.

The book begins by showing you the basic architecture of ADO.NET and then provides you with what you need to know about data providers and the new Connection, Command, and DataSet objects. Wright then drills down into the topics professional developers need to grasp, such as transactions, concurrency, typed DataSets, and using XML with ADO.NET.

ADO.NET: From Novice to Pro, Visual Basic .NET Edition is not for newcomers to the world of computing, nor is it for programmers who've never touched a Microsoft technology before. Even though the cover of the book sugests that beginner developers should pick this title, it is perfect for those who already have some experience with VB.NET and the .NET framework but don't actually have any hands-on, deep and dirty experience with ADO.NET.
This book is designed to teach you all you need to know to develop great database applications using ADO.NET. The author demonstrates how to integrate data from any source, whether produced by code, contained in a flat file or XML document, or even from multiple, disparate database servers.

Welcome to ADO.NET, the first chapter of the book, serves as a great introductory chapter to show what really ADO.NET is. I pretty much like the part on MSDE. Simply put, MSDE is a simplified version of MS's SQL Server; and it's *free*. Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE) is included on the VS.NET (any even on Office 2000). It's great that Wright uses MSDE in the book - thus not forcing you to buy an expensive SQL server solution.
On the next 100 pages (chapters 2,3,4,5) you'll learn about all the important classes for working with data: DataSet, DataAdapter, Command, DataReader and the Connection class.
Chapters 6, 7 and 8 introduce developing Windows/Web database applications.
Transactions and concurrency programming are covered in the folowing chapter - you'll learn how to set up isolaton level of a transaction and how to utilize concurent updates using DataAdapter.
At the end of the book (last three chapters), the author writes about the OLE DB Data Provider; System.XML namespace and how to mix XML and ADO.NET.

Through working code adaptable to individual projects and numerous hands-on examples, you will learn how to create fast and powerful ADO.NET enterprise applications. The end goal of this book is to enable you to work at a professional level utilizing Microsoft's most modern data-access technology: ADO.NET!