Customer Reviews

ASP.NET E-Commerce Programming: Problem - Design - Solution

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

 

 

I have read plenty of Wrox books over the years, but this one ranks at the top of a very long list. The E-Commerce material was covered well, and the book is very easy to read, in fact, it was one of the most articulate software books I have read. I was also very pleased with the code for this book, it installed without a hitch, and compiled clean the first time in Visual Studio.Net. The database recovered well from a .BAK file, so it was painless to learn the material with a real world sample.

If you want to learn CMP, or would like to learn to build a very scalable E-Commerce solution, don't hesitate on this book; it is great.

A word of caution, this is not a book for beginning programmers without .Net experience, as the book is fast paced and does not cover topics like how to create Strong Names for assemblies. It also does not give a whole lot of configuration information for the project in the event you wanted to build off this sample site.

The author definitely knows his stuff, but it is not for those who are not very knowledgeable in C# and ASP.NET. Hoffman has some excellent techniques he is applying to ASP.NET, but you will need to spend some serious time to grasp his concepts. He seems to be an excellent programmer, but not a teacher for those trying to grasp ASP.NET.

Hoffman jumps quickly through this book and you will need to read his other books to see what he leaves out. Security, discussions, community aspects are bare but the best thing about this book is the application of a CMP (Container Mapping Persistence) - a tool from the Java world that was until now impossible to build under MS technologies. Now that we have that I cant wait until it becomes standard. I've already begun to port all our applications to this. It is that good.

This book is a 5-star book in its methodology and clever software development. If you are looking for an "how-to" book in a shooping cart this book is way over your head, and will have a massive learning curve. The book is made to be read from cover to cover to fully get the value of it (if you skip the chapter on CMP,or example, you are just wasting yout time after). The first cool thing about it, is the clever CMP programming methodology for .NET. If you are coming from the Java world of Beans you will clearly not be impressed with it, but for .NET users this is a big thing), the second cool thing is the interesting use of reflections within the CMP to build self discovering object. I would say this is the first time I see a practical example of use of reflection at this level in many years of developing Web applications.
The book is clearly not for begginners. Without having a good grsp of C# concepts such as: abstract object oriented programming and .NET Reflections, this book it would turn to be a waste of time. For those understand the methodology in it, the book is a treasure. If you'd be able to program so thorougly and sistematically as Hoffman's describe it, you will go far in life.

The book doesn't provide much help even to install its own sample code. First, you have to look around very hard to find the source code to download (it is no longer in wrox.com). Second, the database is for restore to SQL Server 2000 only. It doesn't provide any kind of script file that I can make little modify to install it to a SQL Server 7 or MSDE 2000. You will be stuck if you don't have SQL Server 2000 installed. Third, the source code installation is not a install and run, I have to do some change to be able to opetn the solution.

This book provides extensive documentation for a sample e-commerce Web site, but not much in the way of instruction. It is more of a "Look, here's how I did it"-book than a "Look, here's how you do it"-book. If you're a beginner, this book will go WAY over your head. It was written for those already well-versed in VS.NET/C#/ASP.NET and are looking for some guidance to put their skills to use in creating an online store.

The Container mapping is the second chapter is good...
I read a book for a day and return to book shop for next day. I am looking for books to discuss the whole architecure with e-commerce site. This book just breifly describe each topic, and some difficult topic such as inventory control are missed out intentionally...The author says it is waste of resource, then I would say I waste my money. I pay $50bulks for the book and the content should be much more enriched...MSDN has a very good example there, The Duwich Bookshop, Duwich Online.....Those are the materials that I am looking for....

Disappointed

The Container mapping is the second chapter is good...
I read a book for a day and return to book shop for next day. I am looking for books to discuss the whole architecure with e-commerce site. This book just breifly describe each topic, and some difficult topic such as inventory control are missed out intentionally...The author says it is waste of resource, then I would say I waste my money. I pay $50bulks for the book and the content should be much more enriched...MSDN has a very good example there, The Duwich Bookshop, Duwich Online.....Those are the materials that I am looking for....

Disappointed