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01/18/04
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BOOK REVIEWS
* Applied Microsoft .NET Framework Programming in Microsoft Visual Basic .NET, Microsoft Press, 2002, by Jeffrey Richter and Francesco Balena, (List $49.99), 609 pages, www.microsoft.com/mspress, ISBN 0-7356-1787-2. Reviewed 12/15/02, revised 12/24/02.
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For most readers this will not be their first .NET
book. Most likely you'll start with a VB .NET or C# book to learn
the language, then perhaps go to ASP.NET or ADO.NET or XML. Sooner
or later you will realize that the real power of the .NET Framework is
in the framework itself: the Common Language Runtime (CLR) and Framework
Class Library (FCL), along with assorted framework tools. That is
the subject of this book.
When you get there, this is the book that you need. Jerr Richter is an accomplished programmer and prolific author, and was a consultant with the Microsoft team that developed the .NET Framework. Francesco Balena is a recognized VB expert, and manages the Italian version of Visual Basic Programmers Journal. |
| Information that does not appear in other books includes details of differences between the ways that languages are implemented, all the complex rules for creating assemblies (including some that must be done from the command line), reference and value-type variable structure, and a more about the common intermediate language (CIL, or IL) than I have seen anywhere else. For the serious .NET programmer this book is essential. | |
* Beginning XML, Wrox, 2001, by David Hunter, Curt Cagle, Dave Gibbons, Nikola Ozu, Jon Pinnock, Paul Spencer, (List $39.99), 795 pages, www.wrox.com, Reviewed 8/27/01
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Don't let the "Beginning" in the title mislead you. It does indicate correctly that you need not read some other book first, but it is not a cursory look at the technology. Familiarity with HTML would be of some help in plowing through the book, but it takes you from near "ground zero" through Style Sheets, Cascading Style Sheets, XSL and XSLT, XPATH and more. The explanation of the Document Object Model (DOM) may be review, but SAX (Simple API for XML) is definitely new ground. The explanation of Namespaces made the concept much easier for me when I encountered it in VB.NET. Of course there is also coverage of Well-formed XML and Valid XML, Schemas and DTDs, Linking and XPointer, SOAP and more. Believe it or not, all of these terms seemed comfortable and fit together for me by the time I had finished the book. If you need to know about XML (and you probably do), get this book. |
* Moving to VB.NET: Strategies, Concepts, and Code, Apress, 2001, by Dan Appleman, (List $39.99), 560 pages, www.apress.com (code samples), www.desaware.com (book updates), ISBN 1-893115-97-6, Reviewed 12/26/01
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A "must read" for the experienced VB6 (or earlier) programmer, this book provides the how's and why's of making a wise transition to the new .NET environment from the old (ouch!) COM-based model. It is also a valuable read for ASP programmers. Appleman has the experience of programming both VB and C/C++ and deep understanding of COM as well as the curiosity and experimental ability to dive deep into new technologies. Combine that with clear explanations of complex concepts, and you've got a formula for presenting material in a way that is not only easy to understand but also gives a clear picture of both the forest and the trees. This is the third book of Appleman's that I have read (Visual Basic Programmer's Guide to the Win32 API, Developing ActiveX Components with Visual Basic are the others), and all three are winners. |
* Professional ADO.NET Programming, Wrox Press, 2001, by Paul Dickinson et al (9 authors), List $49.99, 718 pages, www.wrox.com, ISBN 1-861005-27-X. Reviewed 5/4/02
This is one of my favorite of all the books that I have read on the new .NET technology, possibly because I have already been through a number of books on VB.NET, ASP.NET, and XML (not strictly a .NET technology, but very important to all of the others). ADO.NET is a huge departure from previous versions of ADO with a fundamentally different design philosopy and a completely new set of objects (SQLConnection, OleDbConnection, SqlCommand, OldDbCommand, DataAdapter, DataSet, DataReader, and more). There is no more RecordSet object, which should get your attention if you have been working with ADO in previous incarnations.
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Examples are presented in both C# and VB.NET, and in a number of instances both versions appear. A majority of the code, however, is done in C#. One of my pleasant surprises was that I had little difficulty in understanding the overwhelming majority of the C# code, despite the fact that I had not yet studied it. At the time that I read this book I was reasonably comfortable with VB.NET, and well aware that both it and C# depend on the same set of classes in the .NET Framework. If you intend to do any data-related work in a .NET language, then this book should be in your library. |
* Professional ASP.NET, Wrox Press, 2001, by Richard Anderson, Brian Francis, Alex Homer, Rob Howard, Dave Sussman, Karli Watson, (List 59.99), 1271 pages, www.wrox.com, ISBN 1-861004-88-5. Reviewed 8/28/01
This book has much to offer and is a valuable reference, but I would not choose it as my first experience with ASP.NET. According to the book, Beta 2 was released as it was being written. There were some significant differences between Beta 1 and Beta 2, and the timing of the book raises concern that some details of that difference may have been missed. The book goes to such great lengths to show that it is not necessary to use Visual Studio that it makes ASP.NET seem more difficult than it is. I do not believe that many ASP.NET programmers will use Notepad in preference to Visual Studio. Finally, somewhere after page 1000, one of the authors uses Visual Studio because it is so much easier for the immediate purpose.
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In my opinion, the whole book would have been easier if Visual Studio had been used throughout. It is fair to assume that most ASP.NET will be written in either VB.NET, C#, or JScript, all of which are hosted in Visual Studio. A late chapter on Migration and Integration does not rise to the same level of clarity as previous chapters. The appendix for VB 6.0 programmers is more an apology for C# than an aid to transition ... the author of this session sounds defensive, and spends an inordinate effort on persuading the reader that C# is much better than VB 6.0 ... a fact that should be obvious, but the same can be said for VB.NET (to which most VB 6.0 would choose to migrate). |
* Professional C#, Wrox, 2001, by Simon Robinson, Ollie Cornes, Jay Glynn, Burton Harvey, Craig McQueen, Jerod Moemeka, Christian Nagel, Morgan Skinner, and Karli Watson. List $59.99, 1287 pages. www.wrox.com ISBN 1-861004-99-0. Reviewed 7/20/02, 5/4/02.
This may be the most valuable of all my .NET books. Although my primary interest is in VB.NET, the fact that all .NET languages are thin layers over the .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR) makes them appear very similar for a great deal of their functionality. Once you have learned any of the .NET languages, the area in which you will spend most of your study time will be in the base classes of the CLR. The power of .NET lies in those base classes, and this book does a good job of demonstrating more of those classes and how to use them than any of the other books that I have seen.
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Early sections of the book provide historical perspectives that explain advantages of the .NET languages and cover the mechanics of C# in detail. Those mechanics include a lot of .NET architecture, including topics such as inheritance, overriding, delegates, type casting, and so on. Later chapters delve into use of the CLR base classes. These subjects include string handling (quite different from previous languages), regular expressions, reflection, threading, and so on. ADO.NET gets two chapters, while XML is covered in one. There are separate chapters on file and registry operations, active directory, ASP.NET, web services, custom controls, COM, COM+, GDI+, internet access, .NET remoting, windows services and .NET security. Although it will take me a long time to work with all of the material covered here, the coverage seems comprehensive and well-presented. |
To me, one disappointment in the book is a section that I thought that I would enjoy most, C# for the VB6 programmer. Rather than providing a supportive guide for those transitioning to C#, the author of this section seems condescending and more interested in proving the (questionable) superiority of the C/C++/C# lanaguages. Skip this appendix and just start the book at the beginning. You'll get more benefit that way.
I recommend this book as a primary reference for C/C++ programmers, and as a secondary reference for VB/VBA programmers.
* Professional VB.NET, Wrox, 2001, by Fred Barwell et al (17 authors), (List $59.99), 942 pages, www.wrox.com, ISBN 1-861004-97-4, Reviewed 12/01/02
My first use of this book was to gain valuable insights on the DataAdapter control that is new to the .NET environment, and I needed some information quickly. The book met my need.
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Everything from the need for VB.NET and understanding of
how its parts fit together to working with the "old" COM
technology is covered in a reasonable complete and clear manner.
There are explanations of the new IDE (integrated development
environment), the new variables and forms and structured error handling
(try ... catch ... finally), as well as creating controls, accessing
data with ADO.NET, and the "big deal" for VB programmers of
using inheritance.
There is a lot of detail, and it provides the same quality as other Wrox books ... my only complaint is that "the same quality" includes too many errors: typo's, sentences that are "decomposed", and simple grammatical errors. Hopefully the new second edition corrects many of those. There was so much new technology arriving all at once that the errors could be forgiven in the first edition that I read. |
VB.NET Programming with the Public Beta, Wrox, 2001, by Billy Hollis and Rockford Lhotka, (List $34.99), 421 pages, www.wrox.com, Review updated 12/26/01
This book was based on Beta 1, so there are some inconsistencies between the text and Beta 2. Although the changes posed little challenge, there are now better books available.
