Customer Reviews

ASP.NET Website Programming: Problem - Design - Solution, Visual Basic .NET Edition

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

ASP.NET Website Programming - Problem, Design, Solution
by Wrox Press

OVERALL ASSESSMENT
I had the pleasure of reading through this book over the course of a week, and I really let it sink it. I was very impressed with this work. This is a great book that the intermediate-to-advanced .NET developer should get their hands on. It's very well thought-out and the lessons are plainly stated, and easy to follow.

Authors Marco Bellinaso and Kevin Hoffmann describe a fictional content-based site that provides information for DVD and book enthusiasts, THEPHILE.COM. The book is essentially a long-form case study, diving into the architecture, infrastructure, and engineering behind an online publishing system.

The book takes a very honest approach and enforces a disciplined, structured methodology to writing an extremely practical (and cool!) n-tier Web app. The book also dives briefly into extending a few of THEPHILE.COM's various applications as desktop applications, which is a nice addition to make for a more well-rounded title.

You'll need a solid understanding of the .NET Framework, specifically ASP.NET, C#, and ADO.NET if you're to get the most out of this book, as it's definitely not for beginners. But it's a no-nonsense, well-prepared look at leveraging .NET Web technologies to your advantage.

There have been several books written to date profiling the design of an enterprise-level solution, like Sams' excellent "Building e-Commerce Sites with the .NET Framework." To cater to the masses, these books present a hypothetical business model, usually based around an e-commerce framework, and feature applications like shopping carts, inventory management utilities, etc. There really haven't been a whole lot of title that deal with simply-yet-prolific Web features like mass e-mail list managers, advertising engines, user polls, and article management - apps that are common to high-traffic Web sites.

On a personal level, I'm in charge of running several news-oriented Web sites, so on a personal level this book had more direct appeal to me, demonstrating how one could implement .NET technologies in efficiently managing content and interactives.

This is a very worthwhile buy (although Wrox apparently doesn't differentiate book length with book price, it being the typical US$59.95), and a great addition to your library. You'll read this one more than once for inspiration on your own projects.

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THE BOOK

The approach to designing the app is very intuitive - from promoting code reuse, object inheritance, modular component design in XML files, intelligent administration files, and much more. The end result is a big app that performs great and is largely self-sustaining.
The authors were very honest. This is most notable in their revelation that they didn't care much for the dragging-and-dropping DataAdapters within Visual Studio .NET, which leads to cumbersome code and a loss of control, preferring to code it themselves. I thought I was the only one. They also write THEPHILE.COM as if it were to be served on a commercial Web hosting service, which is a nice break from the assumption that we're all running massive data centers completely under our control in our offices.
The authors prominently cite Visual Studio .NET as their tool of choice for coding THEPHILE.COM, but don't neglect the text editor crowd, and present their work in a neutral way that doesn't alienate those choosing to stick to NotePad. This is a big advantage.
A best practices approach to enterprise application design is exhibited throughout the book...and this is something the reader will pick up on, using a consistent method that promotes code reuse, componentization, interchangeability, separation of code from content, and modularity. I particularly liked Marco and Kevin's description of the design of their data access tier for their poll feature.

The book is succinct, to the point, and beautifully written. Unlike Wrox titles in years past, the book is a very easy 518 pages (12 chapters, no appendices).
Although written 100% in C#, the code is quite easily transferable to VB.NET, for those interested.
Is it just me...or has Wrox changed the binding on its books? While Wrox titles (at least in my library) have been the first to contract Broken Book Spine Syndrome, the front and back covers seemed more durable, and the book held very well. Which was a much-welcome change, I assure you. And this just isn't because this is a shorter title from Wrox...their entire .NET v1.0 line seems to be better built.
The code download is well-documented, and both Marco and Kevin make themselves very accessible for feedback and help.

WHAT I FEEL NEEDS IMPROVEMENT

Although it's obvious in the book community that having documentation for the two major .NET languages in a single title (Visual Basic .NET and C#) is a tall order to fill (and most often doubles the size of a book), the fact that the book is exclusively in C# may detract some of those developers partial to VB.NET from partaking of what is a really good book. Perhaps the good folks at Wrox are considering releasing a VB.NET version?
THEPHIILE.COM at the time of this writing doesn't exist on the Web...which was a minor downer. I was hoping to see the app running full-speed prior to trying the code out for myself, in the vein of the IBuySpy and ColdRooster demo projects.
While it's unconscionable that each and every line of code would be put on paper, the book highlights some of the more notable code constructs.

I think that the first observation about this book is that it is not what I consider a normal Wrox book, in fact few books I've read both present and structure the content in the same consistent way that each chapter of this book does, making this the most useful book I've read in a long time. This title is totally "hands on" and far more practical than many that are more theory based. The author suggests that you download the code and "get in there" coding as you read the chapters; which is what I did.

The approach of taking an example site from conception to deployment may not please all readers as the level of detail may be too much for them (stored procedures and table design). However, if you are looking to buy this book to help you build a real-world, community based ASP site that requires administration, security and advertising to name just a few areas then this book can almost be followed word-for-word to achieve your goal. If the book does go into too much detail for you at the point of reading, then hold on to it because I'm sure it will become a vital reference book at some time in the future.

The nice thing about the structure of the book that makes it an easy and enjoyable read, other than the plainly written English, is the consistent approach to each chapter. The front of the book states that every chapter works around the three main issues we come up against time and again in development; Problem, Design and Solution. The Design sections lists the features required to solve the "problem in hand", then each of the sites physical layers are designed based on implementing these features using the correct technology as we move towards coding the Solution.

A good foundation is always built upon when solving a defined problem. All solutions are built in a modulised manner, which aids projects with geographically separated development teams, and also eases future maintenance or extensibility. Inheritance plays a large part in the creation of reusable objects in all .NET languages and is used extensively throughout the example web site within server/client controls and the pages themselves to implement security and error trapping. Architecture is considered at the outset, as it should be and the influence of the chosen architecture can be found in most chapters.

This book only ever implements the example ASP code in C# (all well written abiding to defined coding standards which isn't always the case in books) and uses other technologies as and when it needs to, these include - SQL Server Transact SQL, XML/XSLT, CSS, IIS administration, Web Services, ADO.Net and the .Net Framework, helping to give the reader a suitable knowledge grounding. In my opinion, it's a shame that code samples or at least downloads aren't provided in more languages. Although if you are a reasonable .NET programmer, you'll understand the C# syntax and the concepts that the book is trying to convey. The book doesn't over use code samples to pad it's size out, in fact it's a well sized book for the cost, so you won't feel cheated like is commonly the case with some E-Books that contain a lot of code and not so much explanation.

After praising the book so highly and outlining the structure and technologies the book utilises I shall identify the chapters this book covers and highlight a couple of my favorites.

Management/Administration (including secure modification of SQL Server connection settings on-line),
File Management,
Authentication,
News Management,
Advertising,
Polls,
Mailing lists,
Forums
and finally, of course, deployment of the application to a shared server (as most of us don't have the luxury of dedicated servers).

One chapter of interest, and an example of a chapter that I would hazard a guess that a lot of readers may copy large sections of, is called "Maintaining the Site". Again this chapter goes to the level of detail you might not want to read entirely but the contents could be invaluable when you come to implement such a section to a customer's site and the end result could be compared with some commercial implementations!

The point of this chapter is that it shows you how to include a protected/authenticated role based administration modal that allows:

Site Folder Navigation
Renaming of file/folders
Modification of attributes
Remote file uploading/downloading and maintenance
Text file alteration
Logging of changes
The beauty of this over using an FTP package is that it is web based so there are no firewall worries and it should make you look pretty impressive when talking to clients who require a small change as part of a demonstration, which a firewall could sometimes restrict you from achieving.

Another interesting chapter is 'Advertising'. This topic tied in with the 'Polls' chapter, (enabling your site to record demographic information about your visitors), will enable some readers to actually keep their sites alive and cover the annual cost of maintenance and hosting fees which can be high when you try to host .NET technologies. This is all done with an explanation of what perspective advertisers look for and how to implement and again record that information - be it hit counts or impression counts.

Finally the book actually encourages the reader to utilise the hard work that went into designing and programming an extensible framework and suggests that you actually build your own modules and add them to the framework (the result of the book and all the code within it).

So to summarise, if you followed this book and created your own site from it I think you'd have some very happy customers.

If you are looking to develop a website in ASP.NET, using C#, and a SQL Server database, then this book is for you. The authors build a website from beginning to end, taking into account so many things: coding standards, tier design, modular development, security, deployment, and maintenance, to name just a few areas. In addition, they target the situation that a lot of people will be in, which is in using a third-party hosting company to host their website. This book was tailor-made for my project.

I didn't need several chapters that dealt with news management, polls, forums, advertising, and mailing lists, as my project didn't require those things. Still, for me, the book was well worth getting for everything else it contained.

All in all, I found this to be unique among computer books. It takes you through the design and development of a real-world project throughout the whole book, step by step, and when you are done, you have a solid understanding of the entire ASP.NET website development process.

Worth every bit of the money.

I waited for a book like this for a long time.

There are currently tons of books that explain how to develop a website with a certain language or a framework - they often also provide large reference tables for classes and methods. Good books, but they don't show how to use the presented techniques in real-world projects.

And here it is where this book enters the scene and finds its place.
This book guides the reader along the development of a complete web site, from design to deployment. Anyone who has ever worked on a website built using a server-side language has probably faced the same problems: how to develop the common modules required in almost any site, such as news, forum or accounts management. This books teaches just this: how to build these common modules with ASP.NET and C#, and how to plug them into your own site.

Each chapter is divided in three sections, which excellently mix theory and practice without making the reading boring or difficult: problem - design - solution. In the "Problem" section the authors present the problem that the module will solve. "Design" describes the design choices and the reasons behind them, and the last section "Solution" presents the code for the actual implementation of the module. After introducing the general design of a modern site (based on the widely used 3-tiers architecture), the modules used by most dynamic sites are described: there are modules to manage news, advertisement banners, polls, mailing lists, forum, accounts, and there is even a complete web-based file manager!

Particular attention is devoted to users management and the authentication/authorization process. I've found very useful also the chapter about the user interface design, which explains how to build customizable pages with the help of CSS, XML and XSLT. The only prerequisite for reading this book is a basic understanding of C# and ASP.NET (this book is not for absolute beginners in fact): all the rest, especially the advanced topics, are explained in good depth. However, you'll find this book quite difficult if you have no previous experience with ASP.NET (for example, if you don't know what is codebehind, server controls, postback events etc.).

The quality of the presented techniques makes this book a *great* guide, and you'll find yourself referencing to it often, during the development of a web site. The code examples are also great - they are actually complete and working modules that you can reuse in real projects in almost no time. Some of them could even compete with commercial software!

Alberto Falossi
(from his review on Visual Basic Journal Italy - Jul/Aug 02 issue)

I was looking for a book to get into ASP.Net development with C# and my primary goal was to fully utilize the features of .Net environment so that I could write reusable and easily updateable code with the least amount of hassle if there are changes later on in the process. MSDN is great, but it is not always the best way to learn how things are put together in a synthetic whole and how things work in practice. I can't tell you how glad I am to have chanced upon this one:
1) The concepts are crystal clear (which is an indication of how clear the concepts are in the authors' minds). They do an excellent job in giving a solid foundation about the general design considerations in few pages. The time one would save if one read the general discussion alone would be worth the book's price.
2) Authors omit any obvious explanations (which made the book size very reasonable for such great content), yet don't fail to mention any crucial implementation decision along with the underlying rationale.
3) The code is very clean. (You would not believe how much bad code is out there in programming books.)
4) They formulate their sentences with great care. The language, far from being an obstacle, actually becomes a great tool in understanding more difficult topics.
5) Provides a very useful context for msdn help so that when you read a particular topic, you know how to use it once you learn it.

If you are a veteran programming book reader, you would know how costly (both $wise and even more importantly, in terms of wasted time and unnecessary frustration) badly written books can be. This book deserves a full rating for both its great content and clear presentation. I hope this sets the standard for all programming books!

This book is not for ASP.NET beginners. It is intended for developers that have a good understanding of ASP.NET, C# and ADO.NET.
ASP.NET Website Programming is an accurate documentation of a professional Web site design and implementation: THEPHILE.COM, a Web site for DVD and books enthusiasts. The site's features implementation are described following a pattern highlighted by the subtitle of the book: Problem, Design, Solution. In other words, the authors analyze the Problem to face, give a Design of the Solution and implement it. This pattern is applied to each chapter.
Many common Web site festures are taken into account: from navigation management to user authentication, from news publishing to advertising, from polls and mailing list implementation to forum and online communities management.
This book gives a practical vision of using ASP.NET features and a good methodology to software design and implementation.

When it comes to technical books, I usually spend a lot of time browsing through books (in the book stores) and reading reviews (in the internet) before commiting myself to a title. After all, technical books are not cheap and there is nothing more frustrating than one that has been badly written.

The C# version of the book had great reviews and, most importantly, was pitched at a level that went beyond the beginners level. Although many books do not dare to miss the beginners bit, I was happy to see that this book had ommitted it as, once you have mastered the basic stuff, wasting a good part of the book with it can be a bit annoying.

In spite of being a VB.NET programmer, the C# version of the book offered me the chance to see how professional developers designed a complete web site using a very clever three-tier, modular architecture. Moreover, the variety of techniques used in the different modules of the book allowed me to see first-hand the different tools that can be used to perform similar tasks (e.g. the use of XSL to create pages content from XML documents). In spite of being months old, the book still hasn't visited the shelf as a lot of the solutions I have developed are based on the examples shown in it.

The VB.NET version of the book (which I bought I soon as soon as I could), is not only as good as the original (a lot of the content has been copied verbatim), but obviously much more useful if you develop in VB.NET. The book has allowed me to learn a lot of VB.NET syntax I was not aware of and, most importantly, has thrown some light into some aspects that were not clear in the C# version of the book (partly due to my inexperience in that language). The code has been beautifully laid out (one of the shortcomeings of the C# version) and simple things like the naming conventions are much more obvious and consistent in the VB.NET edition of the book. Furthermore, you even get extra content that was not present in the C# version of the book (e.g. how to log errors in a simple file instead of the system log).

Although I would recommend either version of the book, the VB.NET edition is, in a way, an iteration of the C# edition and, as such, has a lot of the refinements and corrections you would expect from a second edition. Overall, I feel this is a must have book for people who earn a living out of this.

If you've learned a little C# and ASP.NET then I can think of no quicker way of learning how to use them than working through this book.

The book has only about 500 pages but it moves very swiftly and contains a huge amount of information. It covers the creation of a complete web site containing many commonly used modules such as news, forums, mailing lists, and polls. The entire web site source code can be downloaded from Wrox.com and is indeed needed as the book sometimes skips over the more mundane bits. To get the best from it you should have a working knowledge of C# and ASP.NET and have a few related reference books on hand. I have got most from this book while creating a new website based on their code.

My own area of interest is more in client-server applications than in web sites but what I immediately liked about the book was the data access base classes they created simply that could be used for any client-server system. They also show the implementation of error handling onto the asp page base class that provides for easy yet robust error handling on all served pages. They show the extension of ASP.NET authentication to provide your own tiers of user-based security. They cover the use of many of the basic ASP.NET controls and provide a level of coverage which I was unable to get from the Microsoft documentation. They cover the design and implementation of a database using SQL Server. All in all there a lot here of interest to anyone creating any type of database application.

Wrox are obviously making an effort to get their example code right, something they have too often failed to do in the past. This website works. I was able to get it up and running within 20 minutes.

In summary I guess you could say I am seriously impressed. Well done Wrox.

I agree with the frustrations that Joel shares about the book. It is not for begineers and it assumes you are comfortable with Visual Studio. The authors glance over a lot of simple concepts (setting up the project, folders, keys, namespaces) and instead concetrate their effort on the more important fundamental concepts (developing really useful web applications using three tier design). This decision can frustrate beginers that are starting with ASP.NET and VS.NET, but should be acceptable to more experienced programmers.

However, let there be no mistake, despite the shortcommings, this is a great book and there are very few in its class. Almost everyone agrees (p2p.wrox.com), the book has no equal and if you stick with it you will be rewarded.

Finally, I have to disagree with your comments about the VB.NET version. I have spent many weeks with the C# version and several days with the VB.NET version, and I can assure you the frustrations you talk about are common to both editions and have nothing to do with translation (even the .snk file location!). Demian and Norbert's translation has answered a lot of the questions I had accummulated and solved a lot of the bugs from the original. This, and the fact that the code is better laid out and makes for more pleasant reading, means I would recommend the VB.NET version over the original.

The bottom line, the book is not perfect and but is outstanding where it counts. Stick with it and you will be rewarded.

My story is typical:

I am an experienced programmer who needed to write an ASP.NET project for a client. I have ASP, SQL Server, COM+, and C# experience and needed a book to get my project jump started.

This book is simply amazing!

By reading and implementing the techniques discussed, my project is up and running and has a very solid architecture that will allow me to extend the website as my client's needs change.

I buy A LOT of books and this is the first time I have ever been moved to write a review!

Kevin and Marco, thank you very much for taking the time to write such a high quality book.

George