I bought this book knowing a good bit about regular ASP and how to communicate with databases, hoping to learn how to do the same thing with ASP.NET. I was not disappointed. The book walks you through step-by-step in creating database connections, command objects, stored procedures, etc... It doesn't dwell too long on topics that it shouldn't be covering (like database design, and web site design). The instructions within the book identify software that is free, so there are no unpleasant surprises. This book will be a great reference and has really helped me make the jump from ASP to ASP.NET.

This book does a good job explaining how to work with databases. The one thing I didn't realize is the only language used for examples is C#. It would be nice if VB examples were also included.

I really liked this book because it shows step-by-step how to do things and then has a "How does it work?" section. Great book! Well written and seems quite comprehensive.

Almost every book with ASP.NET 2.0 in the title will tell you something about the Grid View, Detail View, Form View, SQLDatasource and the SQL 'Select' statement; this one will too. While the other books provide a rudimentary overview of these topics then move on, "Begining ASP.NET 2.0 Databases: From Novice to Professional" takes you way beyond the SQLDatasource and the 'Select' statement, delving deep into ADO.NET.

Just as bread & butter go together ASP.NET and databases go together; and there is a lot more to the database side of the equation than is brought out in most ASP.NET books, which tend to limit themselves to the use of the controls, getting into databases only enough to have something to show in the controls. with this book it is the other way around; the reason for the controls is to display and maninpulate data in a database, and there are several ways to access and manipulate databases with ADO.NET besides the SQLDatasource. Along the way you will learn to use the controls with all the different data access formats and how to use the controls and their events to manipulate the data, which is what it's really all about.

If DataReader, Command Object, DataSet, OLEDBDatasource and ODBCDatasource are not familiar terms to you, and you want to develop ASP.NET web sites you need this book. If you don't know when not to use the SQLDatasource (there are some definite situations when it won't work), or don't know how to create a server side data cache and why you would want to, you need this book.

The book is easy to read and has numerous small exercises titled "Try It Out", after each exercise is a "How It Works" section where the code in the previous exercise is explained, line by line in most cases. Not only does Damien take you through DataReader, Datasets and Commands he also covers stored procedures, which you will want to use rather than queries in code shown in most of the other books.

While the book primarily uses SQL Server 2005, MYSQL 5.0 is also covered at the same time, everything from installing and configuring to using with stored procedures, parameters and transactions.

If you want to build ASP.NET web sites you will work with databases, if you are not intimately familiar with ADO.NET this book should be on your bookshelf readily available.