--Online review of the previous edition of this book
This 3.5 edition of Murach's ADO.NET book has the same great content selection, the same "paired-pages" layout (please look at the Search Inside this Book excerpt to see how this works), and the same readable style that have earned 5-star reviews for the previous 2.0 edition.
But it's been updated throughout to show you how to handle data in VB applications using today's professional techniques. You'll begin by learning how to prototype Windows applications using drag-and-drop tools like data sources. However, the code that's generated by RAD tools like these isn't easily reusable, maintainable, or scalable. So next, you'll learn how to create 3-layer applications, writing your own, more flexible ADO.NET 3.5 code.
Then, the second half of the book is all NEW, introducing you to Microsoft's latest enhancements for data handling. First, you'll see how to use LINQ (Language-Integrated Query) to work with datasets, SQL Server databases, and XML data...tasks that require a lot more code without LINQ. Second, you'll see how the ADO.NET Entity Framework lets you create an object model that provides a flexible and easy way to work with the data in a database by mapping custom business objects used by the application to objects in the database...another way to let .NET do more of the work for you.