Reviewer rating:

For anyone who has ever developed with Java, .NET is going to seem awfully familiar. Both run on a virtual machines (though not exactly in the same way.) Both provide a garbage collector, thread management, exception handling, and a fully object-oriented programming paradigm. The class structures of their respective SDKs are eerily similar, and even the syntax of Microsoft's newly touted C derivative, C# (pronounced c-sharp), owes a lot to the Java programming language. There are some key differences that differentiate Microsoft's system from Sun's, but as a reader who has coded in Java, I appreciate the fact that the authors often make comparisons between the two. With this approach, Thai and Lam have helped me dismiss my initial suspicion that .NET is really just Java for Windows, and have properly explained why Microsoft's framework is in some ways even more ambitious than Java originally was.

.NET Framework Essentials is nicely broken up into eight chapters, each of which addresses the interests of potential software developers. The first four chapters give an overview of the framework's design goals and discuss software development issues such as how to program for .NET, and how to work with .NET components. The second half of the book deals with the four main services provided by .NET: data processing (ADO.NET and XML), Web Services, Web Forms, and Windows Forms. A chapter is devoted to each, and enough code examples are given to illustrate the concepts that you'll finish each topic with at least a general idea of how to approach a problem in that domain. Again though, this book is an overview, and is not meant to be a reference manual by any means.

One of the strongest points about this book is that it doesn't rely on the reader having access to a copy of Visual Studio.NET. Though it is mentioned several times, all code examples are given with instructions for building using the command-line compilers that come standard with the SDK. This allows readers to download the SDK from Microsoft and try the applications on his or her own computer for free. This book does a very good job of covering the comprehensive tools provided by Microsoft, and could actually be considered a good reference for the command-line arguments of these programs. An appendix is devoted to this very subject, in fact.

There are only a couple of topics that would probably be of interest to experienced developers that I feel were not properly covered in this book. The first is a distinct lack of discussion regarding interoperability between .NET programs and tradition ANSI C++ programs and libraries (or even Windows applications coded using the Win32 API.) .NET is multi-language, but for a language to be part of the club, it needs to conform to .NET's Common Language Specification, which traditional C++ does not do. Microsoft has produced Managed C++ as a possible gateway between the two, but it's not clear at all how well .NET will deal with traditional libraries such as the STL, or even with more specific packages such as OpenGL. This is an issue that should have deserved a few paragraphs in this book, at least.

The second issue I had was that given that .NET relies on a common SDK for all of it's languages, and given that this is a book that covers the essentials of the NET framework, it would be reasonable to assume that the SDK would be one of it's main topics. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Having read the book, I understand why that is so, but I could also see this as being slightly misrepresentative for anyone picking this book up off the shelf expecting a reference book on the .NET SDK.

All in all, .NET Framework Essentials is an excellent overview of the subject for someone who doesn't know much about it and would like to know more. It targets developers who have experience, and doesn't treat them like fools. In general, it's a read-once book that you might refer to later for it's excellent coverage of Microsoft's command-line tools.

Reviewer rating:

Concise, clean, logical, all things essential and right to the point. No extra-fat, no made-up bad jokes, no self-promotion, no GIGO.

There are only few minor errors in the book. All the examples downloaded from OReilly site work out-of-the-box like a charm!

This book clearly set a very good model for books introducing new technology essentials to the busy experienced developers.

Be warned: don't use it as your first .NET book if you are not already a somewhat experienced developer!

Reviewer rating:

I found very useful that all examples were in more than one language (C++, C#, VB.NET, VB6). The examples are simple but yet well prepared, so they illustrate the concrete matter of the chapter.

The book gave me a lot of practical ideas how to migrate our products and where to emphasize in future study of .Net.

I recommend this book to every IT specialist that still asks him/her self: What is all this .NET about?