This book is written by Rebecca Riordan who also authored SQL

Server 2000 Programming, a book I reviewed back in June. As I noted at the

time it seemed like a good book for beginners, lots of images to go with the the

text, something that makes sense when you're learning something new. This time I

am a beginner, and I found the layout and content to be easy enough to

follow.

I like this book a lot, one of it's strengths is all the code samples are

present in both VB.Net and C#. Depending on how structured your organization is

you could easily have developers coding in both languages, nice to buy one book

that will work for both languages. A great side affect is that regardless of

which language you're proficient (or at least more comfortable) with you can

learn a lot about the syntax of the other language by comparing the code

samples.

Why learn ADO.Net? I'm kind of used to plain old ADO myself, but change is

coming! Even if you choose to continue using ADO, sooner or later someone else

on your development team or an external vendor will use it...and how you can

really help with performance/data access issues if you can't use it? Remember

too that it's rumored that the next revision of SQL Server (Yukon)

will include the ability to write stored procedures using any .Net language.

All the code samples are provided on CD. The CD itself has a nice interface

including a link to the MS site where you can see errata for the book (very few

items so far). No e-version of the book included though. You'll also need a copy

of Visual Studio .Net and a copy of SQL Server running, not provided on disk,

evals available from Microsoft if you need them.

Follow this link

to see the table of contents, index, and a sample chapter. 512 pages, runs about

$28 at Amazon,

well worth the price. I'll give it a solid five stars for easy of use, clarity,

dual code samples.