In-Depth
Books: Design a Database UI
Rebecca M. Riordan's book, Seeing Data: Designing User Interfaces for Database Systems Using .NET, helps you learn how to design a database UI in order to display information effectively.
Designing an interface for a database can be a complicated task. Seeing Data: Designing User Interfaces for Database Systems Using .NET can help. This book focuses on building effective and intuitive user interfaces combined with ADO.NET. It assumes you have a basic understanding of the .NET Framework as well as SQL.
Rebecca M. Riordan focuses the first part of the book on the basics of developing a user interface. She covers numerous topics, including color, graphics, fonts, and how images work with .NET. The middle of the book delves into databinding with ADO.NET. There are two particularly good sections on how to bind controls to the database and synchronized bindings.
The "User Assistance" chapter lists various passive and proactive ways you can help users. You might not use all the concepts discussed in this section, but it's important to be exposed to them. Finally, Riordan covers designing reports—she discusses a lot of the .NET printing functionality, such as how to manipulate the Print Dialog.
The concepts in the book build on each other and get more complicated as you progress through the book. The examples are short and to the point.
I'd recommend this book to anyone new to user interface programming. It will give you a head start in creating an effective user interface, and you'll learn how to display information in your database once you've gathered it.
Seeing Data: Designing User Interfaces for Database Systems Using .NET
by Rebecca M. Riordan
Addison-Wesley
ISBN: 0321205618
Price: $49.99
Quick Facts: Shows you how to increase the functionality of user interfaces in your database systems.
Pros: Covers both beginning and advanced topics; examples are short and to the point.
Cons: None.