Beginning VB 2005 Databases: From Novice to Professional

Beginning VB2005 Databases from Novice to Professional - a review by James L Szatkowski, PE, NSPE

I am very impressed with the detail in the first two chapters. This is the area where a lot of beginning texts leave out. What are the tools 'exactly' and where to get them, how to install them and how to configure them to work with the examples in subsequent chapters. The text does an excellent job of pointing the reader to the correct 'for now' Microsoft web sites to download and install the applications and even uses good screen shots to add clarity. I had one issue with a MSXML section not being included, however that was quickly remedied on the Microsoft website. I'd recommend that readers keep the Feature Pack for MSSQL Server 2005 page at [URL REMOVED PER B&N - GOTO MICROSOFT] handy for future reference. Some of these features don't work with the Express versions, but others do and it's a pretty complete resource. Another note for the reader is that each 'instance' of installation for these packages should be 'needs to be' separately registered. So even though they're free 'for now', if you install on multiple machines you should do multiple registrations. One step in the Chapter 2 on connecting to a database offers several warnings, but it's not clear to me what the warnings mean - see step 10 on page 26. Subsequent experiments with the examples made it clear - it's Step 11. Selecting the Initial Catalog property is the important point here. Another quick point is that if you mess up the database, the recovery is described in the Summary of the second Chapter. However, it neglects to tell you that you have to delete 'or move or rename' the existing database with the problems before you can put it back in - I figured out by trial and error. Chapter 3 on Basic SQL commands is an excellent course in itself. A perfect work-through, with the provided examples, using SSMSE tool. I enjoyed the development of the statement vs query terminology. It might have been helpful though, to add an example of a statement, such as 'USE NORTHWIND'. This is also where I noted that the only place the USE command is issued is in Chapter 1 where we were working with SQLCMD. I little development of why we're not using it with SSMSE might help the beginner understand when one has to use USE. Obviously, in SSMSE, we've 'selected' the database we're using by the connection to it. In a VB project though, a reader might actually connect to multiple databases - beyond the scope of this text, but addressing it would be appropriate with the USE command. Chapter 4 is a good review of ODBC, OleDB and ADO as used within ADO.NET API. The repetitive way the authors demonstrate the basic sample code against the database not only helps drive home the similarities, but without saying it - pounds in the fundamental concepts of importing workspaces, creating or using connection and query strings, declaring variables explicitly while clearing them, using the 'try' feature of VB.NET including catching the exception if thrown 'although the text sample uses the variable 'e' for this exception vs the default 'ex'!' and how to close a project's connections and readers. This exercise is perfect for those who will ultimately use these techniques for connecting to other databases such as Oracle, SQL Anywhere, MySQL and others which carries into Chap 5 on Data Connections! This Chapter on connections is extremely thorough and, through well thought out examples with detailed explainations make learning a very confusing subject rather painless. Commands and the intracacies of connecting a command to a connection and to command text is well covered. I learned the nuances of setting the properties expicitly and implicitly. This is often glossed over in other texts on the subject but clearly illustrated here with good examples particularly emphasizing the differences between readers 'multiple objects returned', scalars 'single object returned' and non-query commands 'no objects returned'. The Chapter addresses the myraid of uses of the no

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