What you’ll need

You don’t need much to get started. This book, of course. (You did buy this copy, didn’t you?) And a copy of Visual Studio. You’ll also need something to write with, because not all of the exercises are done at the computer, and you might want a notebook of some kind if you don’t like writing in books.

Getting visual studio

You can use this book with any version of Visual Studio 2012, including the Express versions, or with any version of Visual Studio 2010 except the Express Versions (they don’t support NuGet, which you’ll need to download the latest version of Entity Framework).

If don’t have any version of Visual Studio, you can use one of the free Express editions. You can download them from the Microsoft website. Here’s what you need to do on the day I’m writing this, but Microsoft has been known to move things around, so be forewarned: You may have to hunt around a bit.

1. From the main Microsoft website, choosing Visual Studio from the Products menu will take you to the Visual Studio home page.

2. Choosing Express from the list of products at the top of the page will take you to the Express versions page.

3. Choosing Visual Basic 2012 Express or Visual C# 2012 Express on the home page will take you to the product page. Choosing Download on the left side will take you to the Download page, where you can download an ISO image or install directly from the Web.

If all else fails, type “Visual Studio Express download” in your favorite search engine.

Getting the source code

You don’t absolutely need to download the source code in order to do the exercises in this book, but you’ll probably want the databases. (You could always type in the sample data yourself, but that sounds pretty dull, doesn’t it?) You can find them on the book’s website at informit.com/title/9780672335921.