Data Binding with Windows Forms 2.0 : Programming Smart Client Data Applications with .NET (Microsoft Net Development Series)

12:57: I got this book from a friend, and I'm going through it in a speedy pace. I'm only finsihed chapter 2 right now, but I think that I can tell that this is going to be a good book. The datasets chapter was very good, without being condensingly simple, like most of the datasets tutorial that I encountered. As someone who can honestly claim to have never used a data set in a real app (not that I didn't try, I just couldn't make it do what I wanted), I appriciate the kind of treatment of the subject the book has.

I still have to go through more than just the "magic" demos, so I will update this post as I go along.

13:22: I finished chapter 3, which had me buliding a Master - Details relation with grids that is very close to what I need. I'm not sure that I understand how to get this to work with Active Record objects, though. I think that I can make it work. I'll need to see the chapter about binding to custom objects and playing with that a bit to get it to do something useful and pretty. I really like the binding navigator, though, it looks like it can be highly useful.

13:28: Just starting to read chapter 4, and it has a statement there that makes me want to jump up and cry "Halleluja"

Now that is my kind of sentiment. Also check the "Code First Versus Design Features First" section in the beginning of the book.

14:21: Found that text boxes in Win Forms 2.0 has auto complete features. I did not know that. This is really cool.

14:36: Chapter 4 done, it was very interesting, and included examples of several interesting scenarios. Formatting / Parsing were interesting, as well as the more detailed explanations of how databinding works.

14:58: Chapter 5 is done. Lots of ways of using the designer. It included some stuff that I think are cool, since I have seen what kind of code I would need to write in order to make the databinding happen (and I know what kind of a pain it is to write this manually).

15:12: Tried to used what I learned so far, but it looks like interfaces & data binding aren't going well. At least with regard to the designer. I tried to bind to ICollection<T> and to IList<T>, and it fails. It works just find on List<T>.  I guess that I have a lot more reading to do.

I need to go ponder the meaning of matrix multiplication in the general scheme of the universe, so I'll post this now, and post the rest of the review when I return to it.