Essential ADO.NET

Foreword by Tim Ewald

Writing a book is hard. My own book took two and a half years to write, from late 1998 and delivered in early 2001, and the process was hell. My goal was to provide a definitive book on the design of scalable distributed systems in general, and in using COM+ in particular. I couldn't have finished my work without Bob's help.

Bob was my Encyclopedia Data Accessica. Near the end of my project (or well into the second year, anyway), he endured repeated phone calls and endless questions at all hours of day and night. The conversations were all very similar. I would start, without preamble, “How come when I do x, y happens—that can't be right?!??” Bob would answer very patiently, “Hold on, let me boot the machine that has z running ...