L. OQUIN said
with one flaw - the index is consistently off by a page or three. (a corrected index is available at apress.com)

And, there is one caveat - this is NOT a book for the VB/database beginner. If you're just starting VB6 database programming, I would recommend Freeze's "Visual Basic 6 Database Programming Bible," instead.

If you can live with the fact that you need to subtract a couple of pages from the page number in the index, then this book provides outstanding technical coverage of ADO. Now, it appears that Rob used ADO v2.5 for the code used in the book, and there have been some improvements to ADO (it is now at v2.8) which make a few of the timing comparisons, within ado now a bit obsolete. (some recordset operations are now more efficient than they were with v2.5, for instance,) but it this book is still my first, and usually only reference that I need to pull off the bookshelf.

O. Oyewole said
I have gone through this book time after time and there is no better ADO book. It covers it all.

bdh said
I attribute this book with solidifying my ADO skills.

It covers the standard topics I have found in other ADO texts as well as an introduction to more advanced concepts with a functional level of depth. So the information is not too cursory, nor too detailed.

There is a good introduction to connecting to and using data warehouses. The coverage of hierarchical recordsets was also good. The coverage of the basics (connection, recordset, command, et. al.) pivoted around the 'devil is in the details' type of information, which, with ADO, is appropriate.

Of all the ADO books I have read, I most highly recommend this one. It is not well suited for the absolute beginner (i.e., you don't know what a recordset is) or high-level expert, but it should be suited for anyone in between. It took me a while to get into this book, but I feel it paid off.

VisualBasicBooks.com said
"Serious ADO" is written by Rob Macdonald, an independent software expert specializing in enterprise system design using Windows, COM(+), ADO, and MTS. The book is based on the authors real world database development experience. It is designed for intermediate to advanced Visual Basic developers. The book teaches how to use ADO to build component-based systems and web applications as well as traditional client server systems.

The first part of the book is titled "ADO In Depth". It provides detailed coverage of ADO's components and how they work. Real world code examples are provided for better understanding of all concepts. Oracle and SQL Server are covered, including the major non-traditional data sources. Key concepts such as locking, transactions, connection pooling, and marshalling are covered.

Part two is titled "ADO at Large". It explains how ADO is used in real world scenarios. Topics include advanced user interface creation, binding processes, Data Environment, and Microsoft Transaction Server. It shows how to use ADO to build components that benefit from MTS and COM+.

If you are an intermediate to experienced Visual Basic database developer, then this book is a must.

Darrell Nungester said
This is a good book that explains the intimate details of ADO but the format of book leaves a little to be desired. On most pages the 3/4 of the page has the text and the left 1/4 of each page is blank or contains subheadings. There is no clear-cut separation between 1 subject and the next. While reading this book, if you do not pay close attention, the subject will change. The author clearly knows ADO and how to apply it to Visual Basic 6.0 but it appears that he repeats the text in several parts of the book especially in chapter 3 - RecordSets with SQL Data Sources. Maybe it was my imagination but several times I had a sense of Deju-Vu. Didn't I read about this earlier in the book? Chapter 4, 5, and 7 (Explicit Connections, Explicit Commands, and Disconnected RecordSets) are very good and you will want to read these chapters religously. Installation of the files on the CD caused some problems on my PC, which has Windows XP Home Edition. If you like Shakespeare, you'll like the examples in this book. Beware the Index is not in synchronization with the actual page numbers.