The book is the functional equivalent of the many out there discussing using J2EE to build a dynamical website that is hooked to SQL databases. Foggon and Maharry show how if you are in the Microsoft .NET world, you can do likewise. They give a quick summary of earlier Microsoft efforts, like COM, Data Access Objects and Remote Data Objects. And how ADO 2.0 replaced the latter 2, and in turn is superceded by ADO.NET. The entire book is a not too subtle encouragement to migrate to ASP.NET and C#. There are solid technical explanations of why it is advantageous to do so. Like the relative ease of hooking to a back end SQL Server database, using high level classes like DataSet to pull stuff from the database, with a minimal knowledge of SQL needed. Then they show how the latest ASP can use this data to make dynamic HTML pages. Much like JSP and Java servlets. There is even a section on designing a database. Raising issues like normalisation and first and second normal forms. Though if this is new to you, then consider consulting a dedicated book on the subject.
Part 1 Introductions
Part 2 Core Skills
Part 3 The Real World
Part 4 Appendixes
Index