Sam Rockwell Books

This book starts out with some good overview chapters of Windows DNA-- relating all the various technologies (SQL Server, Visual Basic COM, MTS, ADO, ASP, and DHTML) in an easy-to-read way. It also promises to guide the reader through creating a DNA application (a simple online banking application) through examples and exercises in each chapter (This walkthrough approach was the main reason I chose this title over the Wrox book).

While the early chapters on system design and data stayed well-focused on relating each new concept to the online bank example, the remaining chapters did not. Instead, the authors presented only very basic code snippets, unrelated to the sample application, and many of which contained typos or were otherwise non-working (as of this date, the publisher's website still does not offer errata or fixed code samples for this book). For this reason, I cannot recommend this title to a beginner or intermediate programmer/analyst. Since the content is focused towards these groups, advanced programmers will likely pass up this book in favor of the Wrox title. I sure wish I had!