Reviews for Professional ADO.NET 3.5 with LINQ and the Entity Framework (Wrox Programmer to Programmer)

1. For a Techy

   Rated 3 out of 5 stars, February 12rd, 2010

   A very techinical book, found it very difficult to understand.
   Not for the faint hearted.

2. DRY - Don't Repeat Yourself

   Rated 2 out of 5 stars, December 12th, 2009

   Positives:
   
   Code examples in VB.NET and C#
   
   Negatives:
   
   A highly boring and annoying read. The book constantly repeats previous keywords and concepts.
   And it is padded out with a lot of irrelevant waffle.
   
   As a developers we want to know:
   1. What can the technology do.
   2. What is the best way of implementing the technology and why.
   
   We want a book to be perfectly concise.
   We don't want to know that you're going to talk about LINQ to XML. Or that you've
   talked about LINQ to XML. We want you to just talk about LINQ to XML.
   With complete focus on just that topic, without temptation to mention irrelevant snippets.
   We want to know the real life hard earned coding techniques.
   
   "Dave, can you write some LINQ to XML to query this invoice XML?"
   
   "Yes no problem, but did you know that XML was initially developed under the auspices of the W3 Consortium in 1996
   and chaired by the Chief Computer Engineer of Sun Microsystems, John Bosak?"
   
   "No and I don't care! Just write the query and write it well."

3. Frustrating Read

   Rated 2 out of 5 stars, September 12st, 2009

   I am an experienced C# & SQL programmer and wanted an in-depth look at the topics listed on this book's cover. There is no question that the author understands his subject, but I found this book hard going.
   
   The code samples are OK, but very poorly explained and often I would read a paragraph several times and still be none the wiser. I found I learned more from just reading the code rather than trying to understand the explanations.
   
   I've read technical books from talented authors who can break a subject down and help the reader grasp difficult concepts. Sadly, it is exactly these skills that this author obviously lacks.

4. Heavy going

   Rated 2 out of 5 stars, September 12th, 2009

   Bought this book to get into Entity Framework. As an experienced C#/T-SQL programmer, I didn't expect this to be too heavy going. However, while the book seems comprehensive, its heavy reliance on uninformative code samples makes it hard to follow. The book feels too much like a reference work. A substantial amount of content on Link to SQL is now obsolete.

5. Delivers what it says on the can

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, August 12st, 2009

   This is a professionally written introduction to the .NET world of LINQ and Entity Framework. There is not much competition in this area but this book will certainly get your juices going. You will need to be reasonably conversant with .NET technology to get the most from this book.