Anne Boehm
August, 2007
ISBN: 978-1890774431
I haven't written a book review for About Visual Basic in a while. That just could be because I haven't seen a book that justified the time in quite a while. But a new book from Murach is worth taking time.
Still a fan of Murach Training
As you can see from these past reviews ...
- Murach's ASP.NET 2.0 Upgraders Guide (VB Edition)
- Murach's Visual Basic 2005
- The Power of Three! Three Great Visual Basic .NET Books from Murach
... I am still a fan of Murach books. These past reviews, as well as Murach's own advertising, explain all about their different style of technical publishing. (Dip into the reviews above to see what the Murach style is.)
Words that come to mind as I work on this review are
- clear
- straightforward
- uncomplicated
- direct
... and of course, "predictable". If you've ever worked with a Murach book before, you know exactly what to expect from this one. The only thing that might have changed a little bit is that they're getting better at applying their own methods to writing a book.
And what a refreshing change it is for ADO.NET 2.0! If you've been trying to figure out ADO.NET by reading Microsoft's web pages, this book will be like water in the desert for you.
For example, here's Microsoft's definition of ADO.NET:
ADO.NET provides consistent access to data sources such as Microsoft SQL Server, as well as data sources exposed through OLE DB and XML.
Here's Murach's:
ADO.Net consists of a set of classes defined by the .NET Framework that you can use to access the data in a database.
I don't know about you but I know which one makes more sense to me. I throw rocks at Microsoft's documentation quite frequently on this site. They could do worse than to simply start using Murach's books. You can do a lot better by starting to use Murach's books.
At the same time, it's important to note what you don't get with a Murach book too.
- You don't get a "guru" approach to the technology.
ASP.NET v. 2.0 - The Beta Version is a good example of a guru book. It features a "name" author and the program manager at Microsoft for ASP.NET. Murach brags that their authors are full-time salaried employees. So you don't get any "insider" view points or "hidden" features.
- You don't get a light-hearted, "fun" approach either.
Patrick's Start to Finish Visual Basic 2005 is a great example of that kind of book. It really can make learning fun. A Murach book makes learning efficient and effective but "fun" isn't really a word I would use.
Focused On Training
That's why Murach books are targeted for schools and the kind of training course that provides a guarantee that you'll know the material when you finish. They deliver the goods. One of the newer features that Murach has started to provide with their books will appeal a lot to instructors. Many of their best books, including this one, now have an Instructor's CD available. This CD includes:
- Instructional objectives by chapter
- PowerPoint slides for classroom presentations
- Solutions for the exercises in the book
- Student projects and model solutions
- Test banks for all the chapters
- Source code and data for all of the applications in the book
They don't include one of these in every book, however. So instructors will still have an edge on their students if they use a Murach book in the classroom. If you're an instructor, contact Murach for more details.
This particular book is written by seasoned Murach author Anne Boehm and really does hit a new high water mark for clarity and organization. Part of the problem in learning a really impressive, and large, new technology like ADO.NET is deciding where to start. Boehm's organization is as good as I have seen. The side-by-side two page bites make progress into ADO.NET as painless as possible.
If You Buy It ...
If you decide to buy this book, here are a few tips I discovered during my review.
- Book Applications .BAT Files
The batch files in the downloadable "book applications" file at Murach.com might take a bit of work. They all assume that you accept the book default that places all the files at "C:\Murach\ADO.NET 2.0 VB\". If you're like me, and you don't want to clutter up the root of your hard drive with a lot of applications, you will unzip the downloadable file somewhere else. That means that you will have to go through and replace the drive location in all of the batch files.
They might have included something somewhere warning you about this, but I couldn't find it. If you unzip the files to some other location on your hard drive and fail to modify the supplied batch files, you just get a bunch of confusing messages when you try to run them.
