Programming .NET 3.5 224
lamaditx writes "The world of the .NET framework is taken to the next level by the release of .NET 3.5. The intended audience of this book are experienced .NET programmers. There are no sections that tell you details about C#, SQL servers or anything like that. I don't recommend this book if you never worked on a .NET project and don't know how to set up a SQL database. You should be aware that the code is written in C#. You might use one of the software code converters if you prefer Visual Basic instead. I think the code is still readable even if you do not know C#. I appreciate the fact that the authors decided to use one language only because it keeps the book smaller. The authors assume you are using Visual Studio 2008. You don't necessarily need to update to 2008 if you are working with an older edition because you can use the free Express Edition to get started." Keep reading for the rest of Adrian's review.
The table of contents is available from O'Reilly — together with a chapter preview — here. The book does not come with any extras but includes the usual free 45 days access to the book on Safari.
| Programming .NET 3.5 | |
| author | Jesse Liberty & Alex Horovitz |
| pages | 476 |
| publisher | O'Reilly Media |
| rating | 7/10 |
| reviewer | Adrian Lambeck |
| ISBN | ISBN 978-0-596-52756-3 |
| summary | Covers all main .NET technologies found in .NET 3.5 |
This book covers the key technologies in .NET. There are books on each of these technologies: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), XAML, AJAX,C# and Silverlight already, but this book shows you how everything is connected with each other. As the authors note: "Our goal is to show you the 25% that you will use 85% of the time.". From my point of view this is good because I have a .NET 2.0 background and wanted to know what is new in .NET 3.5 and how things are connected.
The book is divided in 3 main parts. The first is presentation, which covers XAML, WPF and AJAX. The second describes how to take advantage of the design pattern support in .NET. The last part covers the business layer which includes LINQ, WCF, WF and CardSpace.
The first part starts with XAML. This is the eXtensible A The next main topic is using WPF which is the successor of Windows Forms. The authors explain how to connect data structures to the user interface which I consider to be one of the most important parts of using WPF. You will also find a lot of code and XAML layout descriptions.
The chapter on Silverlight was not very helpful to me. Silverlight is the competitor of Adobe Flash. Giving samples how to layout a Silverlight application is essentially the same as a WPF application thus it dives into more details of XAML. I am missing the real Silverlight message so this part did not meet my expectations.
The third technology you will learn about is AJAX which leads us away from the desktop client to a web client. The explanation how AJAX works is pretty good. The authors show you step by step how to create a todo list web-application with a database backend using ASP.NET and AJAX. Again, this does not cover all AJAX controls or ASP.NET but it shows you how the parts are interconnected and assumes that if you know how to handle one control, then you can also figure out how to handle all the others. Most web applications need some kind of access control. At this point the authors argue that it is faster to implement your own security tables instead of using the ASP.NET forms-based controls.My opinion is that you should never do something that is not correct to teach something else. There are always people who get it wrong in a way you did not anticipate. My recommendation: use the ASP.NET components and do not implement them by yourself.
The second part about the design patterns was surprising to me because I expected the common introduction to standard design pattern. The Model-View-Controller project implements the pattern for ASP.NET and allows developers to incorporate it easily. The advantage is that you get a comprehensive and easy to understand introduction how .NET supports design pattern implementation. I guess this will lead some developers from theory of design patterns to actually implementing them.
I consider the third part to be the real interesting content. It starts with LINQ which bridges object-oriented code to relational databases. You get to know the differences to SQL and also the advantages it provides by explaining new concepts. The examples are easy to understand and successfully make their point.
Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) covers the hot Service-Oriented-Architecture (SOA) topic. The authors explain what it is all about but you will need some knowledge about Web Services and XML to really get it. The introduction is rather short but more details are explained in the corresponding example.
The chapter about Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) starts with a short example how you implement a workflow without WF. After that you get to see how you do the same with WF. This way the necessity for WF become clear and you understand how to take advantage of this technology.
Card Space is the successor of Microsoft passport which was not successful as an authentication service with respect to user acceptance. This is also the key issue that decides on the success of Card Space. Maybe the improved interoperability will help. The chapter provides you with a short authenticate-yourself test and shows you how to offer Card Space authentication in your ASP.NET application.
The book is a good entry to the world of .NET 3.5 because it gives you an idea about every part and what it is good for. Maybe you do not need all of it for your job but at least you know that it exists and how it might be useful. I think it is reasonable that a comprehensive introduction to .NET 3.5 can not satisfy everybody because the range of topics is too broad. One can argue that this kind of information could also be retrieved from the net. I consider the book to be a better resource because it already summarizes the important information such that you do not drown in a flood of information.
There is also some criticism as I pointed out earlier. Maybe I am just a little picky about the details but if you print code download references into a book, they must be available. Most examples can be downloaded but the Alex Horovitz site was not reachable when I tried to access it. Another personal remark is that I do not like to see quotes from Wikipedia. Other people might think different about that so you just need to decide on your own.
I rate this book a 7. The authors scratch the surface of every topic and choose an appropriate style to explain it. You can tell that they thought about how to explain each topic on it's own and give you not just the "how" but also the "why".
Adrian Lambeck is a graduate student in "Media and Information Technologies" and worked with .NET for a few years.
You can purchase Programming .NET 3.5 from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Typo (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Mono 2.5 released (Score:4, Informative)
actually, iirc, mono is compatible with all of .NET 2.0 and quite a bit of 3.5, so they aint that far behind, see: http://www.mono-project.com/FAQ:_General [mono-project.com]
Re:LINQ = Doomed (Score:4, Informative)
People implement it left and right because its easy: its just one interface to implement (its not trivial, but its not hard either). Also, having something exposed as IQueryable (what you need to "implement LINQ") also allows you to expose it to ADO.NET Data Services, which is a huge time saver.
I don't see why you get "less maintainability for designers" though. Functional programming (which LINQ somewhat is) is a heck of a lot easier to maintain than the alternative.
Re:Typo (Score:1, Informative)
Not to be confused with pogromming [wikipedia.org], which should be avoided.
Re:Just one question... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes they do. Various versions depending on when the products were released (keep in mind .NET 3.5 is .NET 2.0 with a lot of extensions, its still .NET 2.0), so you have Windows Workflow in Biztalk and Sharepoint, Expression Blend is in WPF, of course, many of their own sites use Silverlight 2.0, etc etc etc. .NET 3.5 is fairly recent, especially 3.5 SP1, so we don't see that -as much-, but .NET in general is fairly pervasive at MS.
Re:You know..... (Score:3, Informative)
LINQ to SQL is no different in concept than Hibernate's HQL, or any of the other dozen self-designed query languages. Well, except that it's "language-integrated".
Nor is it limited to databases. A project I work on has none, but uses LINQ heavily for queries on plain object collections and XML. It really cuts down on boilerplate code (but then again, those who have been using Haskell or ML, and know what "map" or "fold" are, should not be surprised - that's what LINQ, in fact, is).
Re:You know..... (Score:5, Informative)
I blame Microsoft for perpetuating this misconception, but LINQ (at its core) has nothing to do with SQL or databases.
I too am a little skeptical about LINQ-to-SQL, the implementation of LINQ that allows querying/manipulating SQL databases. But basic LINQ -- the idea of overlaying the .NET class library with a set of generic query operations and then providing new programming language keywords to twiddle them -- is pretty cool. For example, LINQ can work over in-memory collections of objects or XML documents, which allows you to replace lines and lines of arcane search loops with a single LINQ query statement that is infinitely easier to understand and maintain.
Re:I still don't get it... (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps a language which changes so drastically and so quickly should be avoided.
Eh, not really. New editions of .NET, for the most part, only add options and functionality; they don't break existing code. If you don't want to use generics, WCF, LINQ, etc. as they're introduced, don't -- they just present what amount to easier/cleaner options to achieve the same goals, in some cases. Instead of iterating through a collection and picking out the objects that match your chosen criteria, maybe you write a LINQ query to do it instead. The latter is less code and probably a lot easier on whoever has to maintain your code down the line (it's easier to read/understand/modify), but the former still works.
I've spent a lot more time dealing with fallout from PHP 4 code that isn't valid PHP 5 code (for example) than I ever have with old-version .NET code -- and I spend a lot more time working with .NET code.
The APress book is Better (Score:5, Informative)
Re:LINQ does not sound like craziness (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry to tell you this, but LINQ has run almost to the end of its short life. Turns out the ADO.NET folks are going to kill it off. They like EntityFramework better [codebetter.com].
LINQ was good at a few things, and a LINQ to Objects/SharePoint/etc. that was fully matured would have been nice. But, it won't get there now.
Re:LINQ does not sound like craziness (Score:4, Informative)
Linq TO SQL is dead. Not Linq.
Now people will be using Linq to Entities instead of Linq to SQL.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/products/cc533447.aspx [microsoft.com]
The ability to use Linq on other random collections will not be affected.
Re:I still don't get it... (Score:3, Informative)
So far, MS has a pretty good track of backwards compatibility with .NET. C# in particular goes to great lengths to not break stuff. For example, one of the new features in C# 3.0 is type inference for local variables, similar to "auto" in C++0x. So, you can write:
And type of "list" will be inferred from the type of initializer. Now, "var", is a keyword here, but it's a special one. In theory, there might be an existing valid C# 1.x/2.0 program like this:
In this case, "var" is just a user-defined type, and should be treated as such. And C# 3.0 compiler will do precisely that. The new meaning of "var" will only kick in if you don't have a type named "var" in scope, otherwise you'll just get the old explicit 1.x/2.0 semantics. MS calls that "context keywords". "Context" can be different in any given case - e.g. "var", as noted already, depends on types visible in scope; another context keyword, "partial", is only a keyword when it is immediately followed by another (normal) keyword "class". And so on.
In fact, all new keywords that appeared after the very first version of C# are like that: "global", "partial", "where" and "yield" in C# 2.0; and all the new LINQ keywords ("from", "select", "let", "join" etc) in C# 3.0.
Long story short, a CTP (that is, prerelease) C# 4.0 compiler can still compile any valid C# 1.0 program, with exact same semantics. Few other languages can boast the same level (Java cannot, for example, and neither can C++). I'd say that says a lot about commitment to backwards compatibility in this particular case.
Re:Can't afford Microsoft (Score:2, Informative)
If you're a professional, then you can afford the Visual Studio Professional kits. It's $689. Extremely reasonable and in line with the cost of other professional tools like Photoshop for graphics, Ableton for audio (once you pick up their live packs, anyway), whatever. If you can't afford $689 and can't score a legal free copy (which they hand out like candy at events), you are obviously not a professional.
If you're an enthusiast, Visual Studio Standard is $250. Still reasonable. A little pricier than, say, Ableton without its live packs, but not by much. Not a huge sum. They give this away a ton at events, too.
If you're a newbie, you can download Visual Studio Express, which is a very full-featured IDE lacking only a few options that are primarily used in large-scale development efforts, for free.
Or, if you're a student, you can get a free version of VS2005 Professional, VS2008 Professional, and Server 2003 through DreamSpark.
In conclusion: you are a fucking moron.