Born to Thrive

One of the books I have bought to study for the 70-561 exams was Professional ADO.NET 3.5 with LINQ and the Entity Framework . Simply I wanted the book that would present in details LINQ To SQL and Entity Framework. The book was not cheap but that was probably the only one that included both. Unfortunately I can't say that I'm happy with the book. First of all, the title should be LINQ and the Entity Framework, not ADO.NET 3.5 with LINQ and the EF. Second, I bought this book to get more details on LINQ To SQL (I already have other book on LINQ), but LINQ To SQL takes only 40 pages and doesn't even mention ExecuteQuery method in DataContext class, so if you have any other book on LINQ, then don't buy this one. Definitely not for Entity Framework. In my opinion the book does pretty lousy job teaching EF, at least comparing to Programming Entity Framework book. The same price but at least you can be sure that you will get a complete picture of the Entity Framework presented in very good examples. And if you need a book on LINQ and EF, then buy Programming Entity Framework and Professional LINQ . Unfortunately Professional LINQ doesn't go into details on LINQ to SQL but you can very easily get that knowledge for free watching some online videos or reading ScottGu's Blog, or even check the following whitepaper on your computer (about which not many people are even aware of) C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Samples\1033\LinqSamples\WhitePapers\LINQ to SQL Overview CSharp and VB.doc (first you need to unzip CSharpSamples.zip). You will also find there a lot of good examples on LINQ and Lambda Expressions. Given the fact that there is a lot of free resources about LINQ, I wouldn't be that much disappointed about this book if it cost less than $20. It's definitely not worth $30. Although it has over 500 pages, it's only because of the large font and examples in both C# and VB.NET.  Otherwise, there would be 300 pages. But the book could be very good if the author had added way more examples and explained topics using better examples (like Scott Guthrie does in his blog). "Professional ADO.NET" doesn't mean explained with fewer examples and using harder to understand language but rather presenting more details (like ExecuteQuery method).