Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1068313 in Books
• Published on: 2002-01-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 386 pages

About the Author
Fergal Grimes is a freelance programmer and systems designer. He has 15 years’ experience developing diverse applications for embedded, mainframe, client/server, and Web-based platforms, and is a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer and a Sun Certified Java Developer. He lives in Hollywood, California.

Customer Reviews

.NET tour guide.
This book is very well written, both technically and grammatically (which is something you can't say for all computer books). While it would be next to impossible to cover .NET in it's entirety, this books does an excellent job covering the fundamentals of .NET in a reasonable number of pages:

The CLR - This section is dedicated to the CLR, it's types (there is a descriptive explanation on the difference between value and reference types), System.Object (the base class of every .NET type), deterministic finalization, assemblies (multi-file, private, global and downloadable assemblies are all covered), reflection (dynamically examining a type at runtime), and the basics of intermediate language. At the end, the author builds a very simple compiler to demonstrate how the compilers for .NET translate instructions into intermediate language, which in turn is executed by the CLR at runtime.

ADO.NET - Through many code samples, ADO.NET is given adequate coverage. The DataSet (equivalent to a disconnected ADO Recordset) and DataReader (equivalent to a server side forward-only ADO Recordset) are both covered. Updating a database, both via the DataSetAdapter and directly through Command objects is also covered. This chapter also covers using a DataSet to produce XML and how to serialize (an exciting new topic in .NET) object instances to XML. It would be impossible to cover every aspect of ADO.NET in a single chapter, but this chapter does provide enough information to get acquainted with your available data access options. The MSDN documentation included with the .NET framework or VS.NET should be your next step in figuring out what each property and method does. If you have used ADO in the past, because they share similar interfaces, ADO.NET shouldn't seem that foreign to you.

Remoting - This was my favorite chapter. Remoting in .NET is the means for communication between assemblies, processes and remote computers. It's the replacement for DCOM, and because it is able to work using HTTP, it's finally able to work over corporate firewalls without too much hassle. There are a ton of code samples and diagrams to help understand nearly every aspect of Remoting: the available options (Client Activated, SingleCall, and Singleton), configuration, leasing and handling remote events. If your interested about Remoting, it would be in your best interest to code up the samples in this chapter and run them to see what is actually happening with each different option (Client Activate, SingleCall and Singleton) and configuration setting (leasing, channel type, events, etc...).

Web Services - Web Services are a new option in .NET. The closest comparison from days of old (feels kind of funny saying that) would be XML over HTTP or Soap. I never used the VB Soap toolkit, so I can't comment on it, but I've found Web Services in .NET extremely easy to use. The basics of creating a Web Service are covered, as are more advanced topics such as WSDL, Discovery and UDDI. The chapter also covers writing clients to communicate with the Web Services and how to manage session state between Web Service calls.

ASP.NET - The coverage of ASP.NET will be most beneficial to someone who has done web programming before, because it assumes a certain level of core competencies. Those who have used ASP in the past will have the easiest time learning ASP.NET from the material covered here. To show how things have changed, the author starts out with a dynamic page written in ASP and ports it to ASP.NET outlining the steps taken. Your also treated to instructions on how to create custom HTTP handlers and modules (similar to an ISAPI extensions and filters), which I found to be interesting. Finally, coverage is given to creating ASP.NET pages in the VS.NET IDE.

Windows Forms - Windows Forms allows you to create rich Win32 client applications in .NET. This section starts of with the basics: forms, controls, and event handling and then shows in-depth how to build an example application. At the end of the chapter, you are shown how to use the VS.NET IDE to make building Windows Forms applications quicker and easier.

Other - Other topics covered, but not in as much detail as those topics outlined above, include: Windows NT/2000 event logging, COM Interop, MSMQ, Windows Services, XSL transformations and using the new mobile controls in ASP.NET.

There are a large number of code samples, ranging from simple proof of concept exercises to multiple class case studies. The code samples go hand in hand with the presented explanations and topic discussions located in each chapter. For best results, I'd recommend keying them in, compiling, and testing them out.

If you're an intermediate/advanced C++, Java or Visual Basic programmer, who hasn't yet made the journey to .NET, this book is the tour guide you need. In a clear and concise manner it presents what is possible in the new world of .NET, what you need to be effective with the new tools and technologies, and a generous helping of useful code examples to get you started.

It should be noted that the book samples are written in C#. For those new to C# (which should be just about everyone) an included appendix is required reading. That said, the rest of the book, while written in C#, mainly covers the fundamentals of .NET and the Framework Class Libraries which for most part are language agnostic.

Nice book for someone who work in Java
.NET for Programmers - Fergal Grimes/ Manning

I have spent my last 10 years in the Java world, mostly J2EE.

I thought that now reading a book about .NET will give me a strange feeling.

And indeed, it gives me a strange feeling, but a positive one.

This book is really intended for audience without experience in .NET.

It presents in a clear and simple way the majority of concepts for this technology:

Windows Forms, Web Forms, Remoting, Web Services, COM, MSMQ, ASP.NET and so on.

The book is well structured and it's nice to see a native, clear progress from a topic to another.

Naturally starts with an introduction to .NET, than explains the types and assemblies, and after this, taking a clear example (a poker game) the author presents all these technologies applied to this example: COM based, than ADO.NET and DB connectivity, how to serialize using XML, how to build a DLL, how to introduce a remote service, what about a message queue using MSMQ, how to integrate in IIS.

Ok, now the application is done. But what about web services? How can you introduce SOAP? Do you think that UDDI is too complicated? No way, you will read clear examples of how to use all these core concepts.
Now that we understand the background let's learn about frontend. So let's create a Windows Form based interface. It's nice, but what about a Web Form interface? An entire chapter is dedicated to web forms, so you will benefit a lot from Asp.NET and all the controls there.

Sorry to inform you only now that if you do not know already C# you should start reading the book with the Appendix. This one presents a nice introduction to C#.

For me, a Java addicted, it was a real pleasure to read it.
If you are a Java fan too, after you will read this book you will definitely be more interested in .NET.

Ionel Condor, Cluj Napoca, Romania.