PRObooks
Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 Databases Beta Preview
Cutting-edge ASP.NET developers rabidly devour any new information relating to their Web application platform of choice. The smart and dedicated .NET developer will have already had access to the ASP.NET 2.0 betas and maybe even written a few test applications or upsized some of their less convoluted applications to the 2.0 Framework. Yet even with those exercises, some may encounter hesitation or the feeling that they re missing necessary details to understand all the pieces of the ASP.NET 2.0 environment, particularly when it comes to data access, transformation, and representation from database to browser window.
Wrox Publishing, an imprint that has been providing instructive application development texts for the Microsoft platform since Active Server Pages 1.0, has tailored their Beta Preview series of titles for the progressive developer not concerned about a book s shelf life. Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 Databases Beta Preview examines the tight relationship between ASP.NET 2.0 and ADO.NET 2.0. Author John Kauffman (with help from Thiru Thangarathinam) provides a programmer s perspective into what Microsoft has in store for the next release of ASP.NET. Although books like these are useful on their own, they teach best when they can be read side-by-side with the technology they are promoting. Consequently, Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 Databases Beta Preview is most effective when used in conjunction with a beta release of ASP.NET 2.0, meaning that readers are either MSDN Universal subscribers or have downloaded and installed the Visual Studio 2005 Beta available at http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/vs2005/.
The book follows the structure of many typical ASP.NET and ADO.NET titles: Introduction, Connection, Create/Update/Delete, Display, Presentation Optimization, and advanced topics such as Business Objects, XML, Data Caching, and Event Handling. An obligatory appendix on practical SQL statements is included for reader convenience. One appendix that is painfully missing is a comparative list of changes between ASP/ADO.NET 1.0 and 2.0; for experienced ASP.NET developers, this book doesn t do an adequate job of calling out changes in how the 2.0 experience makes your work any easier. Rather, the approach taken is as an intermediate text for those developers who have dabbled in data-driven ASP.NET pages and are ready to catch the 2.0 train to further their understanding and leapfrog the inefficiencies of the 1.0 release. For those readers, the author has created an adequate, although somewhat dry, educational, matter-of-fact experience. Honestly, I found John s dedication page the most interesting, enthusiastic page in the whole book perhaps he can write another book on his intellectually stimulating experiences he encountered with his family and friends (particularly family/friends Glenn and Leigh).
This book was designed to have a very short lifespan, and given the impending release of the final .NET 2.0 Framework, may be too rapidly antiquated for all but the fastest readers ready to consume and implement the book s code recommendations into their own projects. Although Wrox offers a $5.00 mail-in rebate as an incentive to refresh the final release version of the ASP.NET 2.0 series of titles, this might not be enough to justify the purchase of a technology title with a shelf life measured in days.
Mike Riley
Rating:
Title: Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 Databases Beta Preview
Author: John Kauffman with Thiru Thangarathinam
Publisher: Wrox Publishing
ISBN: 0-7645-7081-1
Web Site: http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/WroxTitle/productCd-0764570811.html
Price: US$29.99
Page Count: 427 pages
