Subscriber Reviews

Average Rating:  Based on 19 Ratings

"Solid book for quick start" - by DarkWalker on 01-MAR-2012
Reviewer Rating:
The book is quite solid and covers most of need-to-know basics of Entity Framework 4.1. There are some references for previous version (in case you can not get the first edition of the book).

The book provides very good examples (in C#, there is also code in VB, but I can not judge it's quality), step by step instructions for some complex actions, a lot of screen shots and useful links.

Another advantage is the structure of the book: I have read it from the 1st page, but if you are familiar with EF in general and want to check some chapter - go for it, the is no heavy cross-referencing and most of the context may be ignored.

The downsides are the following: first of all the 'right' project structure is presented near the end of the book. I was working on the project while reading this book and it was unfortunate to find out that my design was actually wrong from day 1.
Second, the unit testing is delayed quite a bit. I do understand that it is not the purpose of this book, but if the chapter is included - it should be placed near the begging (actually I would rather exclude this chapter at all and spread the chapter content across the hole book).
The last one is that the book does not provide some usability-boards. Sometimes you have a choice - for example between stored procedure and QueryView. The differences between these 2 are described in great detail, the pros and cons are explained, etc, but in order to make a decision you need EXPERIENCE, some real world examples list will make a great difference.
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"By far the best Entity Framework book" - by Narbs on 05-JAN-2011
Reviewer Rating:
This book is by far the best book available that covers the Entity Framework in such detail. Julie did a great job on this book.
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"The Bible for Entity Framework" - by maa on 09-OCT-2010
Reviewer Rating:
I have used it for my entrance into Entity Framework.  I find it readable, detailed and have not found errors in the code or text.  
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"Well written" - by Anonymous on 08-OCT-2010
Reviewer Rating:
I picked-up this book as an intermediate .net/c# developer and knowing nothing about the Entity Framework.  The book is easy-to-follow.  The flow is logical.  The author anticipated and answered questions as I read the book, minimizing the amount of external research I performed.
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"Come on Julia..." - by CodeMonkey on 01-SEP-2010
Reviewer Rating:
The book is good but it's really annoying that I have to go through a bunch of crap I don't care about in order to get the demo that this book uses to the point where I can follow along with the topics I do care about.  There should be a download for every iteration of the demo app in this book, so that i can pick up and start working with the topics I do care about.  Theorist developers always forget the fact that there are deadline devs that don't have time to read their books cover to cover (and also no need).  Don't get lazy on us.  I'll give you another 2 stars when you do this.
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