Professional .NET Framework has been designed as a practical guide to the .NET Framework. It covers the Common Language Runtime environment in which .NET applications are deployed and managed along with the fundamental structure of the base class libraries upon which Microsoft's .NET platform relies. It has been written using beta 2, a feature complete version of the .NET Framework.

This book provides the essential aerial view of the framework, placing .NET in a meaningful context with current programming frameworks, before delving into detail with a thorough, practical, example-led approach to exploring and working with the constituent parts of the framework. It systematically covers namespaces and their extended classes, which professionals will need to work with to build distributed, scaleable, applications. It also covers the techniques required to expose or consume code over the Internet as Web Services.

Professional .NET Framework also examines best practice for designing and constructing applications, engineering .NET components, and utilizing COM interoperability. The final section of the book provides a chapter and case study dedicated to approaching migration to .NET.

The book drills down to a level which scopes specific classes in detail yet retains a focus on imparting information in the most practical, relevant and useful way, to make the transition to .NET as smooth and clear as possible.

This book covers:

An introduction to the .NET Framework

The Common Language Runtime and execution

The .NET class library

The System namespace

Working with data

Engineering applications and Web Services

Remoting

Migrating to the .Net Framework

Average Customer Review:
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.

After the first three chapters, I recommend treating this as a reference book and not trying to read straight through the rest. For example there are chapters on migrating to dot net in general, migrating from VB 6 to VB.net, web services, and .NET remoting to name a few.

As far as a reference book, it focuses on explaining the bigger picture of how to handle common chores. This is not a detailed reference for the classes in the .NET framework, but the ultimate reference for that is in the .NET SDK or VS.NET help.

1 of 1 found the following review helpful:

Not bad content but.......Mar 06, 2002
They repeat the same information over and over and over again. How many times can they tell us the Common language runtime can seamlessly integrate with other languages. I feel like they repeat the same information every chapter. Its sort of nice b/c its in my head now, everything the CLR does, but I could have written cue-cards.

5 of 7 found the following review helpful:

Not enough information for Intermediate or Advanced DevelopeNov 16, 2001
This book doesn't have information for expert level. Some of the information are repeated within few chapters. I guess Wrox should reduce the number of authers for a book or atleast the authers should review others chapters before publish.

16 of 16 found the following review helpful:

Not a Professional bookNov 02, 2001
Wrox has a long standing policy of dividing their books into Professional, Beginner, etc. categories. The Professional books are generally a series of books that deal with topics on a level that requires an experienced developer to traverse. While this book might require experience, it does not fit the mold of the normal Professional book.

One of my biggest beef with this book is the same beef I had with Microsoft's MSDN series of .NET books. It feels more like a mismash of articles that have been published before (in Microsoft's case, they had been). There is no real cohesion in the book, and, while the content is not bad, the lack of cohesion makes you feel more like you are sitting through a conference than reading a book on the .NET Framework. One last downside: The appendices in this book are largely useless.

Having knocked the book, there is good material here. While this book is not the best to learn to code .NET, there is ample information on how the Framework works. If C# is your language of choice, and you are an Internet developer, the chapter on Engineering web services may well become the most useful in the book.

I will this book as an addition to your library, although I but not as your first purchase. If you want a book to understand the .NET Framework, I believe .NET Framework Essentials is a much better tome (at a much better price).

9 of 11 found the following review helpful:

Good collection of material over a broad subjectOct 20, 2001
What is .NET? How can you work with .NET? Why would you switch to .NET? There are a lot of questions that we could ask about .NET that aren't easy to ask. .NET is very broad, and thus, Wrox brought together some of their best authors together so that they share what they knew best about .NET. This book WILL provide the information you need to learn about the new things in .NET.

Remember the old time with the XML series of books? Most books had at least a few similar chapter. This is Wrox's response to counter that. This book is a foundation to learn a lot about the .NET Framework. It will be covering what most developers want to know, for both C# & VB.NET. This is a book that you use in conjunction with other current or upcoming .NET books that will be more focused on their subject.

Having multiple authors on this title, I believe, is a good thing. Simply because it's impossible to have one person know all about the .NET Framework as well as it's good to see multiple opinions. There are over 25 technical reviewers that read through this book to make sure that the flow was as easy as possible from an author to another.

For the rating, it was a debate between 4 & 5. Sure, I'm always looking for more so I guess that's where the 4 would be coming from. However, since I will be using this book as a reference for any other .NET books that will refer to this one for .NET Framework content, it's worth a 5-star. I will be more than delighted to have other books skip the usual "CLR" chapters and point at this book instead.