The book is good and subject is good. Just word of warning for you that is using the codes in the books in C#. If you are using the new SQLExpress 2005, please note for specifying the connection in your datasource:
Example:
From author-->"Data Source=(local);Initial Catalog=Test;Integrated Security=True"

Doesn't work for me!!!

Solution:

"Data Source=(local)\\SqlExpress;Initial Catalog=Test;Integrated Security=True"

Why "\\" instead of "\"?
Because in Visual Studio 2008, it generates an error saying-->"Unrecognized escape sequence"

Just little small detail but other than that, it's a good book for the subject.

This was the first book I purchased covering ADO.NET 2.0, and I'm very glad it was.

I am an experienced .NET developer, so I was looking for something that was intelligently written, with good real-world example code snippets that can be plugged directly into apps.

Any good programmer tends to develop a consistent pattern of code for a particular task, so I personally like books that are written by such a developer who has worked with the technology long enough to have developed a good pattern of use. Mr. Malik would fit that description.

Another thing I liked about the book is that it does not spend a lot of time on non-ADO.NET topics, so you don't have to skip through a bunch of fluff chapters to get to the topic at hand. Every chapter is relevant and useful.

After reading his book, I subscribed to the author's blog, which also includes some very useful material.

This was the first book I purchased covering ADO.NET 2.0, and I'm very glad it was.

I am an experienced .NET developer, so I was looking for something that was intelligently written, with good real-world example code snippets that can be plugged directly into apps.

Any good programmer tends to develop a consistent pattern of code for a particular task, so I personally like books that are written by such a developer who has worked with the technology long enough to have developed a good pattern of use. Mr. Malik would fit that description.

Another thing I liked about the book is that it does not spend a lot of time on non-ADO.NET topics, so you don't have to skip through a bunch of fluff chapters to get to the topic at hand. Every chapter is relevant and useful.

After reading his book, I subscribed to the author's blog, which also includes some very useful material.

Not intended for "Pro". Analogies used made this very, very slow and boring. Highly technical terms used were unnecessary and repetitive w/c makes this book can loose the momentum of the reader to focus more on the topics.
Not Recommended even with beginners.

Not intended for "Pro". Analogies used made this very, very slow and boring. Highly technical terms used were unnecessary and repetitive w/c makes this book can loose the momentum of the reader to focus more on the topics.
Not Recommended even with beginners.

Even if there is "Pro" in this books title don't be afraid to buy this book even if you beginner with ADO.Net. Author is explaining ADO.Net basics in first chapters and all you need to know is VB.Net or C#.

Explanaitions are easy to understand with interesting, easy but still useful exercises. In first 9 chapters you'll learn what is ADO.Net, how to connect to data source, about DataSet, DataAdapter... From 10th chapter author is explaining more advanced topics...

Perhaps I expected too much from this book. There are three long chapters (166 pages) on updating the data base. What is missing is information and examples on handling the inevitable errors that can occur. Too much time is spent on inept ways developers approach design and not enough time on making a good approach (timestamp) robust by defining appropriate error handling methodology. I typically reuse good examples in my code but I have not found a single routine that I can put into production code.

Perhaps I expected too much from this book. There are three long chapters (166 pages) on updating the data base. What is missing is information and examples on handling the inevitable errors that can occur. Too much time is spent on inept ways developers approach design and not enough time on making a good approach (timestamp) robust by defining appropriate error handling methodology. I typically reuse good examples in my code but I have not found a single routine that I can put into production code.

This is truly the only book you will need to understand ADO.NET. It's not a reference, but that's what we have online help for.

Even though the title of the book is "Pro ADO.NET", but this book covers very little new features of ADO.NET 2.0.

If you are looking for an ADO.NET 2.0 book, certainly you should not buy this book. If I could give minus star, I would give it -100 so that it could offset the other positive reviews.

The author is trying to sell more copies by using "Pro ADO.NET 2.0" as the title. But this is a book for ADO.NET 1.0. Whenever the authors are cheating, I hate them very much.


There are no coverages about the new classes in ADO.NET 2.0 at all.

Here are the new features of ADO.NET 2.0 but not covered by the book:
1. Provider Factories ( by using it you can make your code to be access to any databases without changing)
2. Server Enumeration
3. Connection String Builder
4. Metadata Schemas
5. Asynchronous Commands
6. Bulk Import
7. SqlDependency

This is a real-world book. Each topic is explained to the root. The author knows the stuff, no doubt. When I bump into obstacles, I refer to this book and get the answer. I would recommend adding following topics in the next version:
1. SNAC (SQL Natvie access Client)
2. Object Data Source
3. gridview control
Overall, this is the best ADO.NET book out there. Well done!!!!

For reader's of my book (Pragmatic ADO.NET), they should find Sahil's book a upgrade. Since there will not be a 2nd edition of my book, I wholeheartedly recommend this book as the book you need for ADO.NET 2.0.

While I don't agree completely with how this book handles every aspect of ADO.NET 2.0, it most closely matches my opinions.

First, this is certainly not a Pro book, it should be `Idiots guide' or `Step by Step'
Second , the author does not have a style in writing , also is repeating things unnecessarily , mentioning things that does not relate to ADO.NET like discovering planets and Isaac Newton , things he thought funny but just waste reader's time

I recommend Programming ADO.NET 2.0 applications by Glenn Johnson , a much better book than this one.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who is interested in getting practical information about ADO.NET 2.0.

The book is focused on practical tips and tasks and is written in a friendly and understandable tone. It has excellent explanations, an outstanding layout of the various topics and is NOT affected by Microsoft marketing at all - at least from my perspective (buyer and reader of a lot of books on Microsoft technologies) it seperates smoke from the fire and presents things as is. The book does not require prior experience in ADO.NET 1.1, but outlines differences between 1.1 and 2.0 at each step.

The thing that separates this book from others is that it makes advanced topics very easily understandable to people who are not experts in ADO.NET.

Great book, although I am actually wondering why I bought it :) Indeed, the Enterprise Library is one way to implement a Data Access Layer without having to worry, and the future is working with Business Objects directly in SQL Server 2005 thanks to the integrated CLR engine, attributes, reflection... But the book itself is very informative and it is always good to know about the underlying stuff. It is a "must have", a "must read", but probably not a priority. However, pertinence and priority are out-of-scope in this review.

Sahil Malik definitely knows his stuff and knows how to drive the important points home. His explanations rock! After Shawn Wildermuth's Pragmatic ADO.net book, which is now pretty aged, this is the best ADO.net book I have read.

There is no mention of ObjectDataSource and only a superficial mention of SqlDataSource and data binding as part of a Hello World asp.net example, while the rest of the book ONLY deals with win forms examples.

I have the e-book too, which is a searcheable pdf and I searched for ObjectDataSource. I expected at least a full chapter on it if not more. I thought that in my delirium I must have missed it so I searched over and over in deibelief: 0 results.

Please someone point out where I missed it and make a fool of me 'cause I would rather take that than accept that someone would dare title a book Ado.net 2.0 without ObjectDataSource.

Sahil has spent some time in the blogs on this but I am not rating his blog here. Were it not for this huge omission I would give the book 5 stars. I consider this such a letdown and have to average that with zero stars (matching the number of results I got for ObjectDataSource search) to a total of 2.5 stars.

I still recommend the book. The sections he does cover are masterpieces. Just be aware this cannot be the only Ado.Net 2.0 reference you own. You would have to spring for another one.

Sahil Malik definitely knows his stuff and knows how to drive the important points home. Huis explanations rock! After Shawn Wildermuth's book, which is now pretty aged, this is the best ADO.net book I have read.

There is no mention of ObjectDataSource and only a superficial mention of SqlDataSource and data binding as part of a Hello World asp.net example, while the rest of the book ONLY deals with win forms examples.

I have the e-book too, which is a searcheable pdf and I searched for ObjectDataSource. I expected at least a full chapter on it if not more. I thought that in my delirium I must have missed it so I searched over and over in deibelief: 0 results.

Please someone point out where I missed it and make a fool of me 'cause I would rather take that than accept that someone would dare title a book Ado.net 2.0 without ObjectDataSource.

Sahil has spent some time in the blogs on this but I am not rating his blog here. Were it not for this huge omission I would give the book 5 stars. I consider this such a letdown and have to average that with zero stars (matching the number of results for ObjectDataSource searches I got) to a total of 2.5

I still recommend the book. Just be aware this cannot be the only Ado.Net 2.0 reference you own. You would have to spring for another one.

When I first read others' review, I thought it's a good book about ADO.Net 2.0. But after I bought, I found it is difficult to read. It is not well organized. It is one of worst books I ever bought.

i found this book very informative. A very easy read with simple and comprehensive examples. Definetely a good book for the midlevel ado programmer who needs to know what ado functionality is available in framework 2.0.
The last two chapters on xml chapter and sql clr was extremely
messy ie rushed. The first xml example references employee dept id which does not exist on adventure work.
I guess these are the two chapter where we have to go out and buy another book but in general this is a good book.

The cover says, "the only ADO.NET book you will ever need." I'm not sure if that will be true once the next version of ADO.NET comes out, but it's certainly true today. This book covers ADO.NET from the ground up, starting with the basics and moving all the way into advanced topics.

I highly recommend this book for ANYONE working with ADO.NET. The book concentrates on ADO.NET 2.0, but by no means is it just a summary of new features. The author delivers enough information to get even an absolute beginner up to speed on writing data-driven applications. And more advanced readers will also find plenty of new information to digest. For instance, I have been using ADO.NET for a few years now and was planning to skip the intro chapters, but upon skimming over them discovered several little tips and tricks I'd not seen before.

If you're serious about ADO.NET, read this one cover-to-cover.

i found this book very informative. A very easy read with simple and comprehensive examples. Definetely a good book for the midlevel ado programmer who needs to know what ado functionality is available in framework 2.0

Though I've been using databases for years in old style client-server apps and have a grasp of object orientation, this whole .NET stuff is new to me. I'm trying design a data layer for our next project and really needed in depth information to make intelligent decisions, but at a pace that a beginner can follow. This book has it! The author tells me not only what I can do, but why I might want to make certain choices. I like the way he starts at a high level and works down to the details, thoroughly discussing each separate part. He seldom went over my head by tossing around terms he didn't define. I'm sure I'll be referring to this book a lot! Really appreciate the e-book that will make finding specific topics easier.

In general this is a good reference but it is missing some important topics related to the new .Net Framework (e.g., I didn't find anything related to the new DataTableReader object neither about the new Transaction's Model).

In general this is a good reference but it is missing some important topics related to the new .Net Framework (e.g., I didn't find anything related to the new DataTableReader object neither about the new Transaction's Framework).

In general this is a good reference but it is missing some important topics related to the new .Net Framework (e.g., I didn't find anything related to the new DataTableReader object).

I guess it's a broken record around here, but this book was great. Not only will you learn ado.net, but if you are a beginner(wish this was around when I first started using .net architecture) using the .net framework you will learn a lot from this reading. Great examples clear and concise. This is everything a tech book is supposed to be. If you're an absolute beginner you may want to start with a good book on one of the .net languages he uses c# and vb.net in the book, but even a moderate grasp of the framework will help in the understanding. Either way you must have this in your reference collection. I will be ordering anything and everything from this author.

As a programmer, I found this book to be very well written and found myself nodding in agreement with Sahil's commentary beyond the basic technical facts. I usually don't read programming books cover to cover but made an exception with this one. It is very easy to read.

Sahil tackles the basic object model for ADO and adds appropriate extras for the 2.0 features. I happy to see an author cover corrupt connection pools along with a wishlist of other real world issues, solutions and best practices that will be of value to the reader. He also does a great job of covering concurrency issues and other advanced scenarios for ADO. Two thumbs up!

This book stands out among all other ADO.NET books. Being an experienced developer and Application Architect, I am always in search of in-depth information. I must say that this book has provided me insights into ADO.NET which I'm now using in my day-to-day work. I always like books in which author takes the pain to explain a technological concept in detail. I need to know why, where, when and how. Sahil has covered these brilliantly.

Many have said good things about Sahil's writing style; all I can add is that I concur.

Excellent ADO.NET book. Great tips and tricks for every level.
Descriptive and user friendly. Easy to follow.

This book has both C# and VB.NET examples. The author thoroughly covers ever aspect of ADO.NET 2.0.

He covers the ADO.NET Object Model, Connection Objects, Object-Oriented vs. Relational Representation, DataSets, The DataAdapter, Mapping, Editing Disconnected Data, Conflict Detection and Concurrency Resolution, Transactions, SQL Server Native XML Support, CLR in SQL Server, T-SQL vs. SQLCLR vs. Extended Stored Procedures, and Caching Data.

Everything he covers is very thorough and includes examples. The style he writes in flows very well.

I purchased this book couple of weeks back and I found this book covering a lot of real world examples and such associated concepts. ADo.net 2.0 and SQL server 2005 have been covered in lot of details as well as the basic ADO.net concepts. It covers areas like Sql CLR, DTC,connection management to name a few.

Overall an excellent book.

From start to finish, Sahil knocked the ball out of the park. This book serves as a definitive guide to ADO.NET 2.0 and manages to hold the readers interest throughout. Over and over again, he drills down into the more challenging areas that developers have to deal with and gives a ton of real world advice on it. The ADO.NET coverage is obviously a little more in depth than the XML coverage, but that's totally to be expected. A few areas that really stick out are Transactions (which has been dramatically changed in the 2.0 Framework) both simple and distributed. He does a great job of explaining all the jargon in an easy to understand way. Connection Pooling is another (less sexy but every bit as important) area that stands out. So many people get into trouble here and he covers all of the why's so well that there's no room for any ambiguity. I also really liked his discussion of 'Cowboy' type connections - you'll have to buy the book to see what I'm talking about though.

I thought his first ADO.NET book was as good as they get and he repeated his success here. Wonderful from start to finish.