Professional ADO 2.5 RDS Programming with ASP 3.0

By Manohar Kamath
June 30, 2000

ADO has evolved very much since 2.0 version. It's now a feature-rich set of objects that lets you do anything from do simple database operations to retrieve from URL, use XML, etc.

This book, in it's second edition, has evolved from the previous edition too (Read my review of this previous edition). Basically, it is built on the same foundation - most chapters are similar, if not identical. One thing that impresses me is that each chapter gives a strong conceptual information on each sub-component of ADO. Whereas some books tread on "problem-solving" or "by example" methods, this book explains the building blocks of ADO in detail, with examples. There are advantages to all these ways of teaching, but the authors do a great job in their preferred way.

Since I have highly recommended the previous edition of this book to anyone trying to understand ADO, and it is one of my favorite books on the subject, I can not but compare the two editions. The current edition has more chapters (obviously, due to addition of several objects into the ADO object model). The two objects added in ADO 2.5 were Stream and Record, and these have been explained very well in separate chapters.

The authors have added more material to one area they did not cover as much in the previous chapter - using COM components with RDS. The book contains two chapters that explain using COM server with RDS and marshalling the data between the client and the server. These two exhaustive chapters should be a good foundation to build COM servers for RDS.

There are two chapters dedicated to Oracle, something even the previous edition had. I somehow find them out of context of this book. After all, the database treatment should be generic - after all ADO works with a wide variety of database servers. I wouldn't even have minded if they had used Oracle as the de facto database in all their example. But two dedicated chapters to Oracle seems not useful for people who will never work with Oracle databases.

Besides, the authors state "The developer who knows how to use ADO with both SQL server and Oracle is the developer who will know how to program to most of the data that exists in relational databases." The authors seem to have missed DB2 in this equation somehow. I have worked with DB2, and there are many things that are different in DB2 world (stored procedures, for one). Besides, there are many databases on mainframes that use DB2.

The appendix has "An overview of XML" which is a welcome addition. However, I feel the ADO reference at the end is something redundant and it makes the book thicker. The first edition was about 500 pages (with the ADO reference) and current one is about 800. I like thinner books as they are lighter to carry; the thicker books might just scare a beginner!

In summary, I love this book! It is a great learning tool for ADO - both for beginner and advanced users. I highly recommend it for anyone who wishes to use ADO not only with ASP, but any other tool.

What's good:

Please read the review of previous edition, it holds good here too. I have summarized the good points for this edition.

• Excellent coverage on ADO with great examples. And this time, the examples also include XML!
• Each object in ADO object model has been dissected well.
• You can read this like a story book.

What's Not:

• Despite great coverage of ADO - the book still lacks more coverage of RDS. If I were to suggest a topic for the next edition, it will be "Validating data on the client" - this is something I have learnt to be one of the most important things developers should know. While binding data to control is easy, validating for correct data types and data ranges is not very obvious.
• The examples used in RDS chapters are too simple for the real world. I have used RDS over 2 years now, and the applications I have worked have given me headaches when it came to updating. The authors should have used more examples with binding input elements (text boxes, select boxes, etc.) One more challenging thing to do - have multiple data controls on a page and bind multiple-select boxes, something authors do not cover in this book. I sincerely hope they give more coverage to this in the next edition.
• Not much discussion on RDS error handling. I brought this up even in the previous review. The book contains hardly any coverage on this subject. Having used RDS for a while now, I realize it takes some creative ways to handle errors with COM servers that could be reused with just regular ASP code (without RDS)
• The discussion on Oracle databases could have been left out. When it comes to ADO, there are a variety of databases people use, so covering one database could have been avoided. It's my assumption (correct me if I am wrong) is that most ASP developers go with a Microsoft database like Access, Fox Pro or SQL server, so I think a wider audience was missed for these chapters. However, there is nothing wrong with the chapters themselves.
• The book's title is slightly misleading - I think the "ASP" part should just have been taken out. RDS can be used with just HTML - without using ASP. Also, most examples in the book can be used with any version of ASP, and not just the latest one.

Authors
John Papa
Matt Brown
Charles Caison
Peter DeBetta
Eric Wilson

Paperback, 819 pages (2000)
ISBN: 1861003242
Wrox Press

Related Books
* Professional ADO 2.5 Programming
* Teach Yourself ADO 2.5 In 21 Days
* Building distributed applicationss with ADO

Related Articles
Review of "Professional ADO RDS Programming with ASP"

Related Sites
* Microsoft's ADO/RDS page