What Was Left Out

This book is not a reference or a primer about ADO.NET. A good primer and reference to ADO.NET is ADO.NET in a Nutshell by Bill Hamilton and Matthew MacDonald (O'Reilly). The MSDN Library is also invaluable. It is included with Visual Studio .NET and available online at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp. SQL Server Books Online, installed with Microsoft SQL Server and available in MSDN Library Online, is an excellent reference to SQL Server.

This is not a book about how to use Visual Studio .NET to build, compile, and deploy applications. See Mastering Visual Studio .NET by Ian Griffiths, Jon Flanders, and Chris Sells (O'Reilly) for excellent coverage of these topics.