Customer Reviews

ASP.NET 2.0 Website Programming: Problem - Design - Solution (Programmer to Programmer)

5 star:		(48)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am very impressed with this book, and have worked with a number of customers who have also found it extremely useful.

Marco's book differs from other programming books in that it doesn't attempt to provide an exhaustive reference of ASP.NET 2.0 features. Instead, he focuses the book around building a real-world end to end application and introduces and demonstrates how to use the key ASP.NET 2.0 concepts and features in the context of the application.

The result is a very readable book that provides a great deal of context about how ASP.NET 2.0 works, and how the different features integrate together. The result provides a reader with a much better grasp of the end to end structure of how applications are built, and can serve as a good roadmap to make progress in your knowledge and learning of ASP.NET.

I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone who understands the basics of how ASP.NET works already, and is looking for a good book to take them to the next level and really start to build applications with it.

Wow, I wish this book had come out 18 months ago! After learning a bewildering array of 'new' technologies (mostly old technologies with new names), I still struggle when it comes time to actually produce a .NET project. The reason? There is so little context around these technologies it is hard to understand why I would use them, even if I understand how.
Site Mapping is actually a navigation solution! How can I decide when to use the cache? Should I really go to the trouble of writing a DAL? I'm never going to switch this site to Oracle. The User Management stuff is impressive, but is it overkill? Or underpowered?
This book provides at least partial answers to these questions, and many more like them.
If Wrox would create more like this, I would buy every one. The Help file tells me how. Most books give me the theoretical why. ASP.NET 2.0 Website Programming gives me the practical why, from the point of view of delivering a real-life project.

After you are familiar with the basics of ASP.NET and have created some simple web applications, I always find myself wondering where to go next. Looking at advanced "Pro" books leaves me wondering if I'll ever use those advanced topics. All I am looking for is a continuation of the beginner book with some "real-world" examples with some intermediate topics or other useful techniques for what I already have learned.

This book fits the bill perfectly. The author briefly reviews some basic concepts of ASP.NET and its framework and then goes into the web site project that will be built upon throughout the whole book. It goes in depth in topics such as server-side controls, data controls (GridView, DataList, SQLDataSource), navigation controls, exception handling etc. As the author goes through each topic it uses the project website as a guide on how to implement it.

It really helped me understand how to put everything together into one mid-sized website as opposed to little bits and pieces like in other books. A great book for anybody needing an intermediate book on ASP.NET.

I had already bought 3 books about ASP.NET 2.0, and I have many many more about ASP.NET 1.x, before I bought this one...and now I wish I took it sooner! Yes, because this book is no like anything else. All other books I read provide detailed reference to the controls and classes of the framework...and they may actually do a good job at that. However, they often provide un-realistic short examples that span a page or two...too simple to actually reproduce real situations, and in fact most of the times these examples leave you thinking: "well, this is nice, but my app is not that simple...how can I really put this in practice into a real website...that must be fast, easy to maintain, provide logging, designed with the proper 3 tier architecture, reusable components etc. etc. ???". If you've ever thought something like this reading another book, then this is book IS THE ANSWER. It explains how to develop an entire (and pretty complex actually!!!) site from start to finish, convering not only the code, but also all the design phase, with a lot of interesting considerations, suggestions, and discussion of alternatives! It's a dream come true for a developer like me :-)
For those that are at their first experience with ASP.NET 2.0 (but NOT with ASP.NET in general...read something else first if you're coming straight from ASP or some other technology) it also provides good descriptions of the major new features (master pages, themes, membership, profiles, gridview, objectdatasource, menu & sitemap, webparts, localization etc. etc.). (5+++++++++)

I read through the most of the book in a course of 2 days. The book and the accompanying code succeed in discussing both architectural and technical details of a complicated Web application.

The book's architectural ideas are especially very robust. Those who ever doubted .NET as a viable enterprise architecture would be well advised to read this book.

If you are an intermediate or an advanced developer, this is a must read.

First the bad: the book rambles. It is full of awful errors. On page 126, Marco says to use the 'aspnet_sql.exe' program. There is no such thing: it is 'aspnet_regsql.exe'. This book is full of errors like that. The book has not been proof-read very well. Also the code in the book is not consistent with the code you download. You say that the downloaded code is the corrected code? I just got done dealing with a piece of downloaded code that was wrong but the reference in the book was right. How does that work? So its frustrating to work through the book because you don't trust it. One more thing: Marco's naming conventions are inconsistent.

Now the good: Marco's book is pretty much indispensible if, like me, you are new to web development. His approach of laying out the problem, then designing a solution and then working through the implementation is right on the money. We all need the books that summarize ASP.NET but, to get your hands dirty, you need this book . . . and it always comes down to getting your hands dirty.

Thanks to Marco, I found this book helpful and recommend it to anyone who wants to understand the PRO ASP.net 2.0 profoundly.

Before start this book please read the following tips that can help you throughout the book:

1. If you are a beginner in ASP.net 2.0, try to read at least one ASP.net 2.0 book about ASP.net to be familiar what he does in this book. (Honestly, he did describe the controls, ... but people usually give up in reading when they cannot understand the materials)

2. DO NOT give up.
- If you do not understand what he says as a reader, just simply search the topic. For instance, I wanted to find out something in membership and roles and Marco just mentioned in one sentence and I could not understand it but after reading several articles I got it really great in just one simple sentence as he did in the book.

3. Read the chapters twice if you do not feel comfortable(I DID)
- Because of complexity that ASP.net 2.0 Pro has, some parts might be a little hard to find out, but keep reading and don't be worry, he usually explains the topics in several parts in the chapter, so you may find your answer at end of the chapter, even as a TIP which I did.

4. Download the CODES and practice it chapter by chapter
- One of the Wrox's forums user has done a great job by adding project's solutions all together chapter by chapter and it really helps if you want to practice it step by step.

The book contains great details and real world examples that become useful on a daily basis as a C# .Net Developer. The book is structured in such manner that makes you feel you are watching a peer coding using best patterns, practices and all available controls for ASP.NET. I recommend this book for any intermediate-to-advanced programmer; the person must be truly familiar with OOP though, to fully grasp all concepts.

Nice implementation of a multi-tier approach; Business Logic Layer, Data Access Layer and the presentation layer; all nicely planned and implemented. Great job by Bellinaso!

Let's get one thing straight. If you're looking for a reference book, this isn't it. Marco doesn't explain every property of every control that you MIGHT want to use. He explains the most common properties of those controls that you probably ARE going to use, and that's a good thing. I've got my share of 1000+ page Wrox reference books, and they're great for looking up specific items, but not so great for learning.

A comparison is in order. If this were a cookbook, you wouldn't find dissertations on the relative merits of different cooking oils, or obscure recipes requiring ingredients you can't get at the local grocery store. This is the cookbook in which you'll find basic breads, pot roasts, and pastas... the staples that you WILL need at some point. It also includes some dishes you didn't even know you needed until you see them the first time. That makes this book a great place to start learning ASP.Net programming, or a useful walk-through to lead you from v1.1 to v2.0. Either way, it's a great book to have around during the transition.

I also see myself coming back to this book down the road when I need to implement one of the common situations Marco covers such as sending out batches of newsletters, or leveraging the asp.net membership system. I'll be saying "Hey, didn't Marco do that in his book?", and pulling it off the shelf for a quick look.

First, this book is not aimed at the absolute beginner programmer, and it is not an exhaustive reference for asp.net 2.0 or C#. However, if you are an intermediate level web programmer with a good C# background, this book will be a nice addition to your library. Instead of writing alot of details about the book, I'd like to highlight areas that I found to be most helpful for me.
As the subtitle suggests (Problem-Design-Solution), this book very carefully and logically provides a practical approach to web development with asp.net 2.0. In the beginning module, the chapter "Planning an Architecture" was particularly helpful for me. Here, Marco "lays the groundwork for the rest of the book." From this chapter, I learned how to build a solid architectural foundation for an entire web site project. The chapter guides you through the planning process by helping you tackle important considerations such as: "Designing a Layered Infrastructure" (n-tiered design), "Choosing a Data Store", "Designing the Data Access Layer" (DataSet or Custom Entities, etc), "Designing the business logic layer", and User Interface considerations (presentation layer). This chapter makes you step back, take a deep breath, and plan out the project. So often programmers (me included) fail to plan appropriately for a given project. Instead we jump in head first to finish quickly only to find out that our efforts in post-production will far out-weight our production efforts.
Lastly, this book covers all sorts of web site projects. As I said before, its not an exhaustive reference for asp.net or C#, but its a great "go to" book when you need to be steered in the right direction. It certainly helps you ask the right questions. Anyone in web development professionally, in my opinion, should have this book. Thanks Marco.