Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 005
EAN num: 9781861005922
ISBN number: 186100592X
Label: Peer Information Ltd.
Manufacturer: Peer Information Ltd.
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 785
Printing Date: 2001-12
Publishing house: Peer Information Ltd.
Sale Popularity Level: 959904
Studio: Peer Information Ltd.
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
The development of the .NET Framework, with the associated release of the C# programming language, is set to stimulate a new wave of application development. This book aims to provide the information needed to develop powerful data-centric applications using C#. To do this we'll be extensively covering the exciting new features of ADO.NET that deliver efficient data acess and manipulation, and the XML handling capabilities of the .NET Framework. Accepting that data-centric applications will utilize a variety of sources and inputs, we'll also look at additional topics such as using ADO with C#, Messaging Services, and utililizing the Registry and Active Directory. This information is put into context within a number of case studies including one showing how to migrate an application from Visual Basic 6 to C#.
This book has been written with the Beta 2, feature complete version of the .NET Framework in mind, with, where possible, information on running code samples on Release Candidate 1.
This book covers:
Using ADO from C# and Visual Studio. NET
Getting the most from ADO.NET
Handling XML
Working with the Active Directory
Messaging Services
Migrating applications from DNA to .NET
Accessing the file system and Registry
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
The book seems to be written by a bunch of programmer who wrote some explanation around some of their already existing code.
Problem is that the book is so poorly indexed, that even though it covers examples in many subjects, unless you are willing to thumb through the entire book each time you need to look something up ... you won't find it.
Examples include: parameterized queries, combo boxes and even tool tips. Items such as these are covered, but not indexed, making the book almost useless as a reference guide. The book seems to cover a few high level subjects, without discussing much of the necessary foundation ground work of C#/Microsoft programming.
Rated by buyers -
I'd like to say that the code examples are the best part about the book. Also, it seems that the introduction started out very well, providing a great overview of ADO.NET. Yes, and XML, web forms, windows forms, web services/SOAP, and other useful sounding technologies are covered.
The book's documentation of the code, however, was very disappointing. It seems as though someone wrote the code, and someone else did their best to document the code. And did a poor job at that. There were too many generalized one liners for very important snippets of code. And the documenter seems to ramble from generalized explaination to explaination. It also, seems as though the vs.net environment was heavily de-emphasized to the point of doing busy work. For example, at one point the book discusses typing a data bound XML schema into a schema document without describing the XML hierarchy that uses complex and choice elements.(You wonder, "is this required every time I want to render a database in vs.net using XML?"). Just to find out by hunting around in the vs.net GUI that you can drag and drop the database table directly from server explorer to the schema and have the XML identically rendered--taking less than a minute to do so(realizing at the same time that vs.net creates the XML schema that way so it can work with the data effectively).
If you want to learn ADO.NET in a concrete and complete fashion, you're better off starting with Microsoft Q article Q313590 that will point you to even more informative ADO.NET Q articles... (WROX, please learn something from the clarity and brevity and completeness of these Q articles) Otherwise you may be tempted to scower this book to search through its pages hunting for clues that it simply does not contain--wasting precious time for catching up on new technologies.
My hat's off, though, to whoever really wrote the code examples. There's definitely plenty to learn from there from both a C# and ADO.NET perspective. However, you're better off simply downloading the code from the Wrox site for free and stepping through it in a vs.net project. They really did a reasonable job packaging the code for ready utilization.
I did give the book two stars. That's because I paid 60 dollars for it. Please add a star for each additional 12 dollars taken off the book. At 24 dollars, this book would be five stars. It does contain valuable code samples and good introductory information. Unfortunately, I'm having to put the book aside because learning is faster, more efficient, and easier to memorize with Microsoft's Q articles and vs.net's help documentation. Sorry WROX, I love to love your stuff, but your programmers need to add writing to their already wonderful skillset. You could try catching this, though, in author review...before the book is published.
Rated by buyers 
-
Data-Centric .NET Programming with C#.
This book is about using .NET technologies to work with data, since data can reside in different forms at different places, this book focuses on :
1. Databases.
2. XML / XSL.
3. Directory Services.
4. Messaging Services.
5. Files.
6. Legacy Systems.
Spends 4 chapters on "Databases", 2 on "XML/XSL", 1 on "Directory Services", 1 on "Messaging Services" and 1 on "Files/Registry". Rest of the book contains a chapter on "Web Services" and 3 very useful case studies.
Now just in case if you are an ASP.NET developer and are wondering if there is something in it for me, the answer is "yes and no". I said "yes" because you'll learn how to work with different forms of data and I said "no" because you won't learn anything specifically related to ASP.NET in it. All the code examples that are given only marginally touch ASP.NET ( and that also mainly "Web Services" ), they mostly make use of GUI clients and programs to do all the processing. This is one important thing you should keep in mind, if you haven't developed any GUI client applications ( like me ), there is going to be lot of new stuff for you. Now this is not something bad, as after reading this I not only learned how to work with data but also "how to build GUI clients using C#". Having said that if you know a bit of ASP.NET, you can change the applications from GUI front-ends to ASP.NET pages with little effort.
The topics that this book covers are pretty huge and would take separate books to be discussed thoroughly. But I think that the Wrox team has done an excellent job by covering them in a single book.
The chapters on ADO.NET cover topics like `what is ADO?', `how does ADO compare to ADO.NET?', `OleDb and SqlClient Namespaces', `DataSet, DataReader and DataAdapter classes', `Connected and Disconnected Data', `ADO.NET and XML', `Using Visual Studio to build Windows Forms', `Displaying, Editing, Inserting and Deleting Data', `Connection Pooling', `Integration with COM+', `Object Pooling', `Distributed Transaction Processing' and `Serviced Components in .NET'.
The chapters on XML/XSL cover topics like `Using MSXML', `System.XML Namespace', `Reading and Writing XML files', `Creating Windows Forms to Display and Edit XML Data', `Validating XML', `XML and ADO.NET', `Schemas', `XPath and XSLT' and `Navigating and Transforming XML'.
The chapter on Directory Services includes topics like `What is Directory Service?', `What can Directory Services be used for?', `System.DirectoryServices Namespace', `Accessing Directory Services', `Windows Client Application', `Accessing the Active Directory', `Using ADSI', `Searching', `Publishing Services', `Deleting the Service', `Registering the Service' and `Searching the Service'.
The chapter on Messaging Services includes topics like `What are Messaging Services?', `Where to use Messaging Services?', `Message Queuing Features', `Message Queuing Architecture', `Message Queuing Administrative Tools', `Programming Message Queuing', `System.Messaging Namespace', `Creating Message Queues Programmatically', `Finding a Queue', `Sending Messages to Queues', `Receiving Messages from Queues', `Transactional Queues', `Queued Components' and `COM+ Services'.
The chapter on Files, Serialization and Registry Operations contains topics like `System.IO Namespace', `Reading and Writing data to files', `Synchronous and Asynchronous Data Access', `Cryptography', `Isolated Storage', `Object Serialization', `XML Serialization' and `Registry'.
All in all this is a very good book and I give this book 4/5 points and recommend it to any developer seriously interested in .NET C# programming.
Rated by buyers 
-
As the title implies a large portion of the book deals with data access. However, the book also covers a wide range of other topics of interest to budding C# developers (e.g. messaging/directory/web services). The code in the book is as usefull to VB.net developers as it is to C# developers (assuming you can translate C# into VB.Net). Highly recommended.
Rated by buyers -
I was a technical reviewer on this title and find it to be one of the books I keep going back to. It has a good spectrum of coverage and is really for those applying C# and .Net to a real world situation. It is not going to teach you syntax for C# but will show you how to use the .Net framework for Data intensive apps using technologies such as XML, Active Directory, How to migrate existing apps over to .Net to mention a few topics.
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