Our new ADO.NET book is out...
Well, our new book Professional ADO.NET 2: Programming with SQL Server 2005, Oracle, and MySQL was finally released. I'll be mailing out a few copies to my homies so if you're interested in one, please let me know. This was my second book and since it was on ADO.NET, it was a subject near and dear to my heart. I only wrote two of the chapters but it was a real honor getting to write on ADO.NET and it was an even bigger honor to work with the people I did (like most things involving the MVP Program, I was the dumb one out of the group but I really learned a lot working with people a lot brighter than me ;-) ). Working with multiple people is always a challenge because of all of the coordination that has to go on, but my friend and our lead author Wally McClure did a really great job making it all work. One of the side benefits of working on a project like this is getting to work with so many great folks and getting to know Wally a lot better. If you're interested in learning ADO.NET 2.0, I objectively think this book is an excellent vehicle to get you there.
Which brings me to another point. It seems like just yesterday that some guy named Sahil Malik started posting in the ADO.NET newsgroup. I remember thinking to myself, 'Wow, this guy is really impressive'. I started reading his blog and we eventually became friends. I had the pleasure of nominating him to the MVP program and a lot of other people shared my feelings about him - in the period of just a few months Sahil was a MVP as well. When i first heard Sahil was writing a book on ADO.NET 2.0, I was really excited b/c I knew it would be great. He probably has the best command of the subject matter of anyone I know, or at least as good as anyone out there (Frans Bouma and Shawn Wildermuth are about as brilliant and well versed as they come too). I got to work with Sahil a little while he was writing the book and when it was finally released, it exceeded my already high expectations. Just looking at the Amazon rankings, which stay under 2,000 most of the time, you can tell that everyone agrees. Anwyay, I mention this because Sahil taught me quite a bit and encouraged me to get into writing. When i was working on my chapters, I ran a lot of stuff by him and he helped me out quite a bit. If you're going to buy an ADO.NET 2.0 book, obviously I encourage you to pick up a copy of our book, but no library could be complete without having a copy of Sahil's book in it. (I've referred it to a good many friends and co-workers and everyone has had strong praise for it).
So I just wanted to thank all of my co-authors for including me on the project and being so great to work with, and wanted to thanks Sahil and Frans, not to mention Angel , Sushil , David Sceppa and the rest of the ADO.NET team, Shawn Wildermuth, Miha , Bill Vaughn and everyone else that's helped me learn ADO.NET