Microsoft Silverlight Books

Good book, but could have been even better

This book is definitely the best book about EF on the market. Programming EF was second book I read about EF. After reading Jennings's Professional ADO.NET 3.5 with LINQ and the Entity Framework I was little bit confused about some EF topics and this book helped me to get rid of many of those confusions. Especially chapter 2 and 3 about 'philosophy' behind entities and their implementation in EF were excellent.

During reading I found 2 things that could be improved. The first is data model used in samples. It contains about 15 tables/entities with many relationships. Maybe it would be better to have smaller model, or several models focusing on different features of EF instead of one 'big' model at the begining of book. I always had to browse to Chapter 5, where model was described.

The bigger problem was order of chapters. Book starts well with chapters about EF essentials, but then for me little illogically it shifts toward the usage of EF in WinForms, WPF, ASP.NET (chapters 9 and 11). I think these 'technology-special' chapters (and also chapters about stored procedures) should be added at the end of the book, or at least after other extremely importatnt topics like working with relationships (chapter 15), object state manager (chapter 17), or exception handling and concurrency issues (chapter 18).

But even for these two small issues I recommend this book to everyone who wants to learn EF in 'why' way. I have already ordered second edition of this book.

Timmy_A
23 August, 2010

Incisive, thorough and an exciting journey

I bought this book to further my existing knowledge on the Entity Framework. After spending a few months with this technology on some important modules at work, I knew I needed more than just the basics to get me by. I needed something that would truly take my hand and walk me through the inner workings of this data technology that Microsoft is really touting as its stalwart ORM platform for the future. "Programming the Entity Framework" was exactly what I needed. Lucid, precise and detailed in its expression, it covers the fundamentals of this vast technology and takes its readers through a very informative, thorough and practical journey through the Entity Framework. A definite buy for anyone interested in working or currently working with this framework. It is arguable the best book available out there.

Cranialsurge
12 April, 2010

Comprehensive book on EF

If you're looking into learning ADO.NET Entity Framework, this is the book to have. The book is concise, very detailed, and well-written-- and that's usually rare to find in most technical books these days. The author often sheds some insights on remote subjects that are related, and gives the most-straightforward answers. Apart from other technical books, I can really tell that she took a lot of time and effort on making sure that every single topic is well-understood. I felt that she's actually speaking my language instead of trying to impress me with jargon that will just throw me off. Having said that, it's a natural gift to communicate and be able to explain complicate things in the most simple manner. I wish sometimes that every author out there shares the same passion of teaching as her.

Aside from the book being well-written, the combination of screen shots, notes and codes in both VB and C# makes the material easier to "stick". The reason for having both languages is the fact that C# and VB has some language distinctions that may not well translate easily into the other language, and vice-versa. It helps to have both just for reference. The book is filled with every information that you'll need to know to work with Entity Framework, and every options are explored as far as utilizing the available features. People with no experience regarding Entity Framework or LINQ to SQL will be able to pick up things easily since it all starts with the basics and build upon the previous examples.

Overall, I highly recommend this book to anyone who are interested in getting to know Entity Framework from the inside-out. The book is well-written and the topics are easy to understand. If you've been wondering about the intricacy of EF such what the underlying metadata does, or how queries are being executed, among other things, then this is it.

Dennis Rongo
26 May, 2010

Impressed

I have hundreds of computer books on programming in the last 24 years. This is by without a doubt the best written, most informative on the subject matter of any book I ever purchased. Julia Lerman knows her subject matter and is able to pass her knowledge on without losing the reader along the way. O'Reilly needs to hear more from her! Great author and excellient work! I want to thank Julia Lerman for her time and attention to details she put into this effort! Thanks

Ryan L. Todd
29 October, 2009

Great book!

This is a great book for both the beginner programmer willing to know about the EF and for the seasoned coder who wants the details of this new data access technology.
Sample code is available in both VB and C#, with good examples and techniques.

Harley O'Brien
14 September, 2009