'Effective Visual Studio .NET'
by David R K DeLoveh, William Sempf, Dan Maharry and Donald Xie


I nearly didn't write a review for this book, since it is written for the previous version of Visual Studio .NET (probably two versions ago by the time this review is published) and version 1.0 of .NET. However, there are a couple of chapters that make it worth while at least having a look at the book in your local tech bookshop.

Overall the book is a competent, if slightly sketchy look at developing .NET applications and has something of a bias towards Web development and development using SQL databases. The language of choice for the book is, of course, C#, but the examples are sufficiently clear that they could be understood by any competent programmer familiar with Java or C++.

Of particular note are the chapters on using Visual Source Safe and Software Design with UML. The former deals with a subject that is only mentioned in passing in other, similar, books I've read. The latter deals with using Visio to generate UML diagrams and code skeletons. It also gives a tantalising hint of VS .NET's ability to reverse the process and reverse engineer some of the UML diagrams from C# code. This is something I've never seen mentioned in any other books on Visual Studio before. Very interesting.

Alan Lenton
7 November 2005

'Effective Visual Studio .NET' by David R K DeLoveh, William Sempf, Dan Maharry and Donald Xie
0-861006-96-9
Wrox Press, 572pp @ £21.99


Return to the reviews page

Back to the Phlogiston Blue top page

If you have any questions or comments about the articles on my web site, click here to send me email.