This book is intended primarily as a reference and learning tool for
experienced developers who need to master ADO.NET. You
don't need experience with ADO, but you should be
familiar with .NET basics such as assemblies, events, metadata, and
the Common Language Runtime. If you are new to .NET,
you'll be well served by starting with an
introductory work such as .NET
Framework Essentials by Thuan L.Thai and Hoang Lam
(O'Reilly and Associates, Inc.).
This book also assumes you know the basics of developing database
applications. The examples in this book use the
Northwind sample database, which is
automatically installed with SQL Server and available with the freely
installable, scaled-down version, Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE). If
you use a different database product, you won't be
able to run all the examples as written, although all the concepts
will still apply.
Finally, to get the most out of this book, it's
strongly recommended that you know the SQL language. If
you're new to SQL, you should supplement this book
with such books as SQL
in a Nutshell by Kevin Kline and Daniel Kline
(O'Reilly). You may also want to read books that
target the specific SQL extensions used by your database product,
such as Oracle PL/SQL
Programming by Steven Feuerstein and Bill Pribyl
and Transact-SQL Programming by Kevin Kline, Lee
Gould, and Andrew Zanevsky (both O'Reilly books).
