Which books we recommend for learning how to access data in ASP.NET applications.
Programming Entity Framework: Building Data Centric Apps with the ADO.NET Entity Framework
by Julia Lerman. Programming Entity Framework is a thorough introduction to Microsoft's core framework for modeling and interacting with data in .NET applications. This highly-acclaimed book not only gives experienced developers a hands-on tour of the ADO.NET Entity Framework (EF) and explains its use in a variety of applications, it also provides a deep understanding of its architecture and APIs.
Professional ASP.NET Design Patterns
by Scott Millett. Professional ASP.NET Design Patterns is all about showing you how to use the power of design patterns and core design principles in real ASP.NET applications. The goal of this book is to educate developers on the fundamentals of object oriented programming, design patterns, principles, and methodologies that can help you become a better programmer. Design patterns and principles enable loosely coupled and highly cohesive code, which will improve your code’s readability, flexibility, and maintenance. Each chapter addresses a layer in an enterprise ASP.NET application and shows how proven patterns, principles, and best practices can be leveraged to solve problems and improve the design of your code. In addition, a professional-level, end-to-end case study is used to show how to use best practice design patterns and principles in a real website.
ASP.NET 4.0 in Practice
by Daniele Bochicchio, Stefano Mostarda, Marco De Sanctis. ASP.NET 4.0 in Practice contains over 100 real world techniques distilled from the experience of a team of MVPs. Using a practical problem-solution-discussion format, the book will guide you through the most common scenarios you will face in a typical ASP.NET application, and provide solutions and suggestions to take your applications to another level.
LINQ in Action
by Fabrice Marguerie, Steve Eichert, Jim Wooley. LINQ, Language INtegrated Query, is a new extension to the Visual Basic and C# programming languages designed to simplify data queries and database interaction. It addreses O/R mapping issues by making query operations like SQL statements part of the programming language. Adding to its power, LINQ is extensible and can be used to query various data sources. It offers built-in support for querying in-memory collections like arrays or lists, XML, DataSets, and relational databases.
NHibernate 3.0 Cookbook
by Jason Dentler. This book is written in Packt's 'Cookbook' style, which means it's really a series of how-to templates that guide the reader through some goal-centric activity. A 'recipe' is a formula for accomplishing something, like setting up a session for a web application, or using a profiler with NHibernate, or creating a validator class. You may not know what some of these things do-- but you will when you read the recipe! Each recipe follows a repeated pattern, with sub-sections "Getting Ready", "How to do it", "How it works", "There's More".
ASP.NET MVC Books
Microsoft's Jon Galloway recommends these books for learning ASP.NET MVC:
