Beginning Visual Basic .NET Databases

Beginning Visual Basic .NET Databases
by Bill Forgey, Denise Gosnell, Matthew Reynolds
Copyright 2001
Apress

Find out more about this book, or purchase it, from Amazon.com

The brave new world of .NET is already upon us, although we yet have to be engulfed by it, at least not yet. If you haven't made the leap from our beloved (and also sometimes despised) "original" VB to VB.NET, you might want to starting prepping now, before it is too late.

A part of this new adventure is to learn how to store data using VB.NET, and this is what the book, Beginning Visual Basic .NET Databases is all about. This is a good book if you are already familiar with the basics of VB.NET, but are now wanting to learn how to use VB.NET to connect to and access databases. Although the focus of this book is working with the SQL Server Desktop Engine, what you learn also applies to SQL Server server editions.

Here's what the book covers:

• Relational Database Design

• Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine

• Querying the Database

• Exploring the Server Explorer

• The User Interface for the Database

• Data Access with ADO.NET

• Reading Data Into the DataSet

• Data Binding

• Updating the DataSet and Handling Errors

• Conflict Resolution

• ASP.NET

• ADO.NET and XML

• Web Services

• Disconnected Data

• Case Study: B2B Application Integration Using XML

As you can see, the book is designed as a beginner's guide to databases using VB.NET, beginning with the basics of database design, progressing through connections and data manipulation, along with providing some real world examples. If you are new to databases, then you will find this book a good beginning.

Unfortunately, the book doesn't spend much time covering  the performance implications of using VB.NET to access databases. As I have preached elsewhere on this website, I think it is important to teach performance fundamentals to beginners, so they learn how to do it right in the first place.

This book does a good job of the basics, and I recommend it for beginners. I guess that's why the book is called Beginning Visual Basic .NET Databases. Once a beginner has mastered this book, he or she will be ready for more advanced topics as they begin their journey to mastering .NET.