We have some money budgeted for book purchases.

We are on the cusp of moving to .NET from VB IIS to develop web applications, and VB.NET for other uses.
We are experienced in VB 6, but need helpful documentation to move to .NET.
We don't want to waste any money, and would like recommendations for top-notch books.

I have included

Beginning VB.NET (Wrox)

and

Professional Crystal Reports for Visual Studio .NET, 2E (Wrox)


Any other “must haves,” Wrox or otherwise?

Brian

What are you planning on doing with your applications? Fortunately, I have a pretty big budget when it comes to books (through work, that is), so I can probably recommend a couple.

J

Right now we use web pages to gather infromation which is then stored in Oracle.
Through a user click on one of the pages, an out-of-process server is started that retrieves that info from Oracle, and creates an AutoCAD drawing from it, which then can be downloaded to the users workstation.

But I think that we can probably make good use of creating web-services also, plus (of course) typical Windows applications.

Well, I don't use Oracle so I can't recommend anything there.

As far a general windows applications, I have found the book Mastering VB.Net from Sybex to be very useful. There are some errors, but I believe that it has an errata that has been published. A few errors are to be expected in a book that size as it is over 1000 pages. I also believe it was written for .Net 1.0 but I have found very few changes in the code presented. There are often times when I just need to look something up and this is the book that will have the answer I need or something like it 9 times out of 10. You can probably pick it up on Amazon for around $10.

I have also used Professional Crystal Reports and have found it to be very useful and to the point.

I just got the book "User Interfaces in VB.Net". I haven't had the time to read it but just glancing through it makes me think it has some very useful topics regarding forms and building custom controls.

HTH

J

I'd recommend anything by Francesco Balena or Mike Gunderloy - both of these guys really know their stuff and put it across in an easily understood way.

Francesco Balena has done 'Programming Microsoft Visual Basic .Net' that , whilst not being quite as good as his one on VB6, is still a fantastic text.

Mike Gunderloy has done a lot of the ExamCram books for Microsoft Certified Application Developer certification. Whilst these books are designed to get you through the exam, they cover a huge range of stuff and give step by step instructions on many topics.

I also have some books by Gunderloy and think overall that they are written very well. He also returns emails quickly regarding questions in his books so that is a plus.

J