Gregg R. Hill said
The first third of the book deals with subjects covered in other WROX publications. The treatment here is cursory, but enough to be usefull. However, once the code is covered things get messy. Properties are all named with Get (not good practice) and several properties should be coded as methods, for which the authors seem to have little use. ADO should get more attention, but the authors just go ahead and hard code database connections. The same parameters are sometimes treated as variants, then strings or integers. The stored procedures for the T-SQL database were all named with an sp_ prefix (which is a no-no), and so on... On the whole it's a usefull book, once you clean up the authors' mess.
B. Olalekan said
In my opinion, this is how every book that attempts to teach computer programming should be written. Most books on programming tend to teach bits and pieces that leave the reader hanging in mid-air. You learn the "alphabets" and the "parts of speech" of a programming language, but you are not taught how to put it all together into a beautiful prose, right?
Not this book. "Beginning VB 6 AppDev" takes you, as it were, by the hands, and leads you through the tunnels, the caverns and other subtleties of application development. What you have at the end is a superb application, and a well enlightened reader. It is very rare to find a book this good: a single book that covers virtually everything needed to develop a fully, functional scalable application. Yes, it covers the whole development life cycle of a multitiered application.
The authors did a very good job. I gave it five stars because it is worth five stars. If you are not convinved, get a copy, and study it.
Seth Peterson said
I'm a huge fan of the book that WROX has put out over the years (the 2 Beginning VB 6 books are phenominal). They've taught me virtually everything I know about programming. However, I must say that this book falls far short of my expectations for this publisher. It started out great; the examples of using RUP and UML were very helpful. I also learned a lot about MTS, XML, etc. that I did not know before. However, when it got to to actually writing the application, I had to take charge. Repetitive logic, misaligned object architechture, and not enough descriptions made me so frustrated that I only finished the book so I could rewrite the application more efficiently. Now, I'm a far cry from a professional programmer, so maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture. But, when I read a book to lean a new technology or method, I don't expect to be saying things like "Why did they do it this way?" or "It'd be much more clear if they did it this way." These, among other things, were said while reading every page in the sections dealing with writing the app. All in all it was very disappointing, but I won't hold it against these guys; they're still my favorite.
Thusith P Kathaluwage said
Before buying this book I was curious how the enterprise level VB developement has been done. Though I am a developer, I did not have enterprise level experience. I was searching for a book which gives a real world development. It's a great book !!. It jumps into the subject with real world example, Banking Application. This is the pattern required by the people who're waiting for a enterprise level experience. I can recommend it without haveing any doubt. Go ahead and buy it, you never regret it. my congratulations to all authors to this book.
Thusith Kathaluwage AACS,MCSE,NCC
Bruce K said
The target audience for this book is someone with some VB/VBA/VBScript experience who is looking to expand into serious VB development, and has possihly been put off by more advanced and detail oriented books. The writing style is casual but not cute. Concepts are presented first from a big picture view followed by more detailed explanations and code. A single main project is woven through the book with numerous additional short examples for introduction of new topics. Examples are kept to just the point being explained and contain numerous screen shots. The introduction to COM is outstanding and of correct depth for the intended audience. Although there were 3 principal writers, the book speaks with one voice and one writing style. It is, I believe, an outstanding choice to follow completion of a book like Peter Wright's Beginning Visual Basic 6.
Bruce Kirkpatrick MCDBA, MCSD, MCSE+I, MCT, i-Net+, Network+, A+
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