Customer Reviews

ASP.NET 2.0 Instant Results (Programmer to Programmer)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The only reason I give this book a 4-star review is the fact that I wish it said somewhere in the description that the code provided as VB, and that there was no C# examples.

The examples work very good for the most part, with a few corrections and the publisher's forum for this book is a great source of info. Imar, one of the authors, has been very helpful in helping me translate one of the chapters to C#.

Definitively not a beginner's book.

While I don't think this book is the one I'd pick for my first introduction to ASP.NET, I think it just might well be the second. It's a great concept that I haven't seen before. Basically the book consists of twelve web applications that are coded in ASP.NET, these include:

* Online diary and organizer
* File share
* Chat server
* Survey engine
* CMS
* Blog
* Photo album
* Customer support site * WebShop
* Appointment booking system
* Greeting cards
* Bug base

You can start by looking over these applications to pick up a bunch of programming techniques that these authors (who have a lot more experience in ASP.NET than I do) use in their coding. There is a pretty good chance that one of these applications might well serve as an ideal starting point for the next application you're starting on. Using this working application as a starting point you can start making changes a little at a time rather than having to start programming with a blank sheet of paper.

I'm sure that a purist programmer will say that you should start with a blank sheet, but remember that we are talking about beginning to intermediate users. The publisher calls this series of books 'Programmer to Programmer.' Here you have a trio of pros showing how it should be done. The pro programmers in your organization don't have the time to work with the beginners.

Of course there's a CD with all the code so you don't have to re-type it.

I'm new to ASP programming and have read a number of ASP and ASP related books. In a nutshell, this book helped put all the pieces together. The other books showed me how to use all of the various features in isolation, but when I sat down to actually build a site I had trouble deciding which tool to use and how best to make everything work together.

This book contains 12 real-world examples demonstrating the most important features that I would like to incorporate in my sites. Each chapter of the book is an in depth explanation of each application. While I bought this book merely to serve as a reference for implementing features I was having trouble with, I've found it extremely profitable to go chapter-by-chapter reading the explanation of each application. Reading this book is like being able to pick the brain of an experienced developer regarding applications he has written.

Unless you are an experienced ASP developer you'll almost certainly want to purchase a traditional ASP book, but I highly recommend this book as an additional resource to help put all the pieces together!

Concepts
I operate a small yet dynamic web design/ development business where time is of the essence and sometimes we may not have the time to study new languages as they are released.

The approach we decided to take was to purchase a range of books based on languages that are currently in demand and in our own time self study or tackle the theory when needed. This has proved to be a key factor in our current success.

The only issue I had found was the majority of the books available teach you key principals but not necessarily an array of concepts in which these principals are applied. This is where ASP.NET 2.0 Instant Results fell from the heavens into my book collection.

ASP.NET 2.0 Instant Results puts the concepts first followed by key factors used to implement them.

Action Learning
Before starting my business I worked with an organisation based on a Philosophy called Action Learning which integrates learning with work rather than learning first and apply your new found skills afterwards. One of the key benefits of this philosophy is that the experience you gain through learning at work enables you to remember it for a lot longer... experiential learning!

I have found that the way in which I use ASP.NET 2.0 Instant Results integrates with my style of learning as I use its concepts/ resources when appropriate plus its direct style of writing is effective in my approach. .. similar to reference material.

Enjoy!

[...] ASP.NET 2.0 Instant Results helps you quickly create dynamic Web pages with ASP.NET 2.0." This description made me think this book would offer "step-by-step" examples of how to go about designing and building .net applications from scratch. In fact, the opposite is true.

This book works in reverse, by offering you several already made applications, then the authors discuss how the applications function, the classes, controls and so forth. The only instruction you will get to "quickly create dynamic web pages" is from yourself, after you have studied all the examples and learned enough to do it on your own!

Now, this is good stuff, don't get me wrong. However, the term [...] instant results" is completely misused when refering to this book. You will not get "instant results" in any way, shape or form. If you are new to programming .net, it will take you many hours of studying to understand the concepts of the applications. If you wish to modify the applications for your own use, again, you will need to understand them first, and this will take time.

But again, it is a good reference to study how to design and construct applications based on multi-tier architecture, which is what you want to use. So, I give it high marks for that. It is a good book. I'm glad I bought it and I'm spending a lot of time with it. Just don't think it's an "idiot's guide" kind of thing. It's not.

Although ASP.Net 4.0 is forthcoming, I bought this book because of the way the websites were designed using N-Tier, and that alone is worth every penny for me. The book provided complete websites with Data, Business and Presentation tier where other books just teaches you the syntax, not complete projects, plus the author is kind enough to answer every question in Wrox forum. This would definitely help me in preparing for my certification, plus the book of M.Macdonald or S.Walther for additional reference. This book is written in an ideal not-so-complicated manner so if you have just completed a beginner ASP.NET book, this book should be next in your agenda.

I would definitely watch out for other new books by Imar, and I hope that those will also have a project-based examples just like his previous works. Highly recommended!

It ain't instant results, buddy. It is quick-and-DIRTY results, as the book presents a lot of bad designs. Where is the multi-tier design? Some chapters in the book show how to put those SQL queries right in aspx pages where only user interface code should be in. Some chapters show how to spit datasets out of business logics. Well it is quick, but should you want to expand or fix things, you would have to redesign and code all over again. Trust me I used to do the quick and dirty works many times and got burnt with broken websites.

Parameterized sql query and stored procedure are so little talked about. These allow you to avoid SQL injection attacks 100% even you don't validate user inputs! (but you should).

Consideration of performance gains and hits of their designs are not discussed at all. The book says you can spawn this and that in matter of minutes, but it doesn't tell you that you'll pay the cost later to support more visitors.

There're inconsistencies between different chapters and authors. This is trivial though, but they should explain why some use auto-generated INTEGER while some use UniqueIdentifier to store ID values. Why char(1) not bit data type? Why ntext and nvarchar(MAX)? Why varchar and nvarchar?

I don't recommend this book to anyone. Go with ASP.NET Problem - Design - Solution by Marco Bellinaso

This book is absolutely not for beginner. Do not buy this book unless you know how to set up your Database with Sql Server 2005 and work with IIS. The book does not give any instruction on how to do this. Try to use the example and upload to your site and see what happen. I wonder if the author tried their examples online to see if it works before finishing this book. Chapter 5 is a disaster, after you almost complete the examble, you know that the authorization does not work, you have to go to their site and get the fix. There is no instant result at all but instant of frustration and confused.

How I wish descriptions of these asp books would indicate the LANGUAGES used!! That is a big deal. Very seldom does anyone say which language is used. Like, it isnt important???