Book Review: Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Databases

At 500+ pages, Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Databases is the slimmest Wrox "red" book I've read. Unlike most of the other Wrox books, it has a single author - Thiru Thangarathinam.

Data Access using ASP.NET 2.0 has been greatly simplified with the introduction of new & enhanced controls and mechanisms. The book covers a wide array of topics related to building data-driven applications with ASP.NET 2.0. It starts with a quick intro of ASP.NET 2.0 & ADO.NET 2.0, dwells in great detail on DataSource Controls (AccessDataSource gets lesser space) & Data bound controls (the emphasis is almost exclusively on GridView) & goes on to cover Transactions, some ADO.NET 2.0 enhancements, Enterprise Library & data acess with SQL Server 2005. There are 2 case studies which although contrived demonstrate how the topics covered in the book can be put to practical use. I found the thorough explanation of implementation of CLR stored procedures useful.

I feel the book is rather oddly titled. It could have been called ASP.NET 2.0 with SQL Server as the content & code samples hardly refer to any other database. At some places the content looked patched up (with the prolific author's other writings) & the ride was bumpy at times.

The book contains a medley of topics suitable for a web application developer coming from a ASP.NET 1.x background. If you're venturing to build a large data-driven web application with ASP.NET 2.0, this book can help you understand & decide which new features to leverage & how to incorporate them.