Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Book: Enterprise Services with the .NET Framework

This book was waiting for me when I got back from TechEd. Written by fellow Regional Director Christian Nagle, this is just the best book I've read on this topic and one of the best I've read on .NET itself. It's gives some background, explains the topics clearly and contains good examples and samples.

As an IT Pro, I've found it very difficult to get 'into' some of the deeper aspects of .NET and development on the MS Platform. I'm a network guy, used to talking to Admins, support staff and infrastructure architecture. Although I have spent time on a couple of OS projects, and can write a bit of code, I'm basically NOT a developer. It seems to me that most books these days are written by and for developers.

Reading David Platt's Introduction to .NET, especially the first edition, was a great start for me. It's the first technical book that I've ever read cover to cover, and when I finished it, started reading it again. I've also read most of the latest version (but mainly because David signed my copy!). But because it was aimed as an introduction, it ran out of steam for me and I needed more. I find myself today, able to read and write a bit of C#, and able to understand things at a basic level - I can even watch Ari Bixhorn show Indigo code and get what he talking about at a high level. But if I dive into MSDN, or watch some of the depth level webcasts, etc - there are sentences that I just don't fully understand (yet). Of course, as an IT Pro haven't needed to understand this stuff!

In summary this book explains a lot of things, and gets me closer to a fuller understanding and for that I'm grateful. For example, I'm starting to understand what apartments are (as opposed to how to specify them in the registry!)

What this book suggests is that there is probably a need for more on .NET framework from the point of view of someone who is not a depth developer but wants to understand more. In summary, this is a good book for IT Pros to take a look at and to better understand the Enterprise Services with .Net.

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