Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Beginning C# 2008 Databases: From Novice to Professional (Beginning from Novice to Professional)

Beginning C# 2008 Databases: From Novice to Professional (Beginning from Novice to Professional)
Paperback: 482 pages
Publisher: Apress; illustrated edition edition (January 11, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1590599004
ISBN-13: 978-1590599006
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 1.3 inches






Assuming only basic knowledge of C# 2008, Beginning C# 2008 Databases teaches all the fundamentals of database technology and database programming readers need to quickly become highly proficient database users and application developers.

A comprehensive tutorial on both SQL Server 2005 and ADO.NET 3.0, Beginning C# 2008 Databases explains and demonstrates how to create database objects and program against them in both T–SQL and C#. Full of practical, detailed examples, it’s been fully revised and updated for C# 2008 and offers the most complete, detailed, and gentle introduction to database technology for all C# programmers at any level of experience.
  • Comprehensively and concisely explains fundamental database concepts and programming techniques
  • Rich in working examples of both T–SQL and C# programs
  • Covers all the features most database programming ever requires
What you’ll learn
  • How relational databases work and how to use them
  • How C# uses ADO.NET to access databases
  • How to write stored procedures in T–SQL and call them from C# programs
  • How to use XML in database applications
  • How to use LINQ to simplify C# database programming
  • How to install SQL Server 2005 Express and Visual C# 3.0
  • Express and use them to teach yourself database programming by doing it
Who is this book for?

Beginning C# 2008 Databases is for every C# programmer. Database programming requires relatively little knowledge of C# but a lot of knowledge about relational database concepts and the database language SQL. This book assumes no prior database experience and teaches you, always through hands–on examples, how to create and use relational databases with SQL and how to access them with C#. Almost every application needs to access a database, and this book teaches all the fundamentals you needand may ever needto develop professional database applications.
About the Apress Beginning Series

The Beginning series from Apress is the right choice to get the information you need to land that crucial entry-level job. These books will teach you a standard and important technology from the ground up because they are explicitly designed to take you from “novice to professional.” You’ll start your journey by seeing what you need to know—but without needless theory and filler. You’ll build your skill set by learning how to put together real–world projects step by step. So whether your goal is your next career challenge or a new learning opportunity, the Beginning series from Apress will take you there—it is your trusted guide through unfamiliar territory!
Related Titles from Apress
  • Beginning C# 2008: From Novice to Professional
  • Beginning Database Design: From Novice to Professional
  • Pro C# 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform, Fourth Edition
  • Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008

User Review:

This book strikes an unfortunate balance between being too broad for a beginner to learn from, too basic for an intermediate developer to find anything new, and too unfocused to serve any one purpose well. The book should be titled "SQL Server review, C# Console Applications, and a Broad Overview of Visual Studio." That is about all that you will see in this book. Want to know how to integrate windows form applications or websites with databases? Want to know how to do the code-behind for those projects? You will not find any of those answers in this book. I really have no idea what the editors were thinking in sending this book to press.

The authors clearly know their material and convey it very well to the reader, but the weakness of the book is the selection of material covered. Why dedicate one-fourth of the book reviewing SQL basics? Any reader attempting C# databases should already know SQL basics. If the reader does not know them, then the 100 page overview is not nearly in-depth enough to teach it. Why dedicate the last few chapters to the basics of forms and web pages in Visual Studio if those chapters don't go into any detail on incorporating datasets or datareaders into those forms and pages? The book is supposed to be about C# and databases, not website design or user controls. And why do nothing but console applications, rather than windows forms? Talk about narrowing down your audience.

I thought this book would help me to build windows forms that would form the GUIs for SQL databases. Instead, I threw this book down in disgust after spending hours flipping through chapters of review on SQL and then chapters that scratch the surface of C# databases with nothing but examples of console applications, followed by an overview of very basic concepts of Visual Studio. The only people whom I could recommend this book to would be...

a) Individuals who already have experience in building C# databases with older versions of SQL Server and Visual Studio (say, 2000 and 2003, respectively) and who have not done any development recently. This might be a good refresher for what they already learned but may have forgotten, though I still think that you could find a better reference than this.
b) Someone who wants to build console applications. If you have the urge to build a console application that extracts data from a database, then this is the book for you.

For anyone else, I recommend looking elsewhere. I returned this book to Borders and purchased Pro ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008. While that book is more expensive, three times longer, and focuses more on webpages than on applications, it is more relevant to C# databases than what this book delivered.


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