Customer Reviews

Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 in VB 2005: From Novice to Professional (Beginning: from Novice to Professional)

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

 

 

I found this book to be substantially better than others that I looked at. Most ASP.NET books focus on how to use the automated tools in Visual Web Developer. These are powerful tools, but they seem to give your website a "canned" look.

Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 in VB 2005: From Novice to Professional covered these tools, but went deeper, and demonstrated how to access the important features of ASP.NET 2.0 directly in code. The material was very accessable to me as a novice, and the examples were extremely helpful. I was able to copy them into my code, make the modifications to address my needs, and they worked flawlessly.

Sorry guys. This book is in no way set up for the novice. I am a 3rd year computer engineering student and I find many parts too technical for the beginner. The terminology used will require a certain amount of education to be able to grasp the concepts. If it were named "for the professional", I'd have given it a 5.

I teach a web application development course for experienced MIS undergraduate students at a huge southern university. This is the second edition of MadDonald's in VB I have used and will continue to use it as long as he keeps publishing them. My students will have had two programming courses in which they use VB and are very experienced with database design, SQL, and stored procedures.

The book provides superb coverage of the development and execution environment, the fundamentals of coding and contols, data connectivity, security, and performance issues. Unlike most other references (at least for VB 2003) MacDonald focuses exclusively on the code-behind pages and doesn't try to mix up the VB code in the HTML pages.

The book contains a superb brief overview of web services--definitely enough for my students to create and field their own.

The explanations and examples are well written and easy to follow for this audience.

I received the book"Beginning ASP.NET in VB.NET" recently in our User Group meeting and just finished going through the 600 pages. The chapter with creating a data table based on a datagrid connected to the Northwind database. This early demonstration of ASP.NET's power leads to an "aha" moment and keeps you going. It is refreshing to have the code work as promised. Unlike other ASP.NET books which address VB a communities that show a marked preference for one or the other language, virtually every example in this book is given a five star rate. There are several screenshots of how to carry out various tasks in ASP.NET that are very useful for beginners. Similarly, screenshots of results from example programs are also very helpful. This book is "self-contained" for any concepts it discusses. You don't need to run to another book to seek clarifications. For me, this is the one book that brought together every aspect of ASP.NET, from hands-on tasks, to conceptual issues. And the beauty is the whole discussion doesn't seem disjointed given its scope. I guess this is the advantage of having only one/two authors. The one minor criticism (may be just my personal preference) is, in the chapters on Accessing Data with ADO.NET, I wish there was (i) a short discussion of further abstraction between UI and a database made possible by using XML, and (ii) creating strongly typed datasets from XML schemas (using the xsd.exe tool for example) but likely it is outside the scope of the book to discuss this (in fact creating XML schemas and reading XML data files are addressed in later chapters through examples, so (i) is taken care of. And (ii) is too specific to warrant being a critical point). I strongly recommend this book as an essential reference to ASP.NET.

Before purchasing this book, the reader should have "some" working knowledge of Visual Basic 2005 Language, a VB 2005 reference book or some form of training material for VB 2005 Language; the book only presents an overview of VB 2005. If you are hoping that this book will cover Strongly Typed Datasets, then you will be sorely dissappointed; the book doesn't even mention it, which, as one reviewer noted, may be outside its scope.
The author's use of "Novice to Professional" clearly means you are not an absolute beginner. Overall, this book is a great introduction into [.........]

Of all of the books I have purchased for ASP.NET (VB) so far, this book is the best. It covers most if not all topics needed for the intermediate ASP.NET developer. Good writing style with clear ideas and examples. The book is organized well and it is easy to find the particular topic you are looking for.
I think it may be the best ASP.NET book for the price and would recommend to anybody who needs a reference manual for their web development in ASP.NET.

The presentation isn't consistent, and I was surprised about all the wrong information the author wrote about classic ASP. Granted, .Net is better, and I would expect him to at least get the ASP code right. Really. ASP is essentially a web page that carries scripting, and .NET is essentially an OO application that spits out web pages. It seems a bit like trying to sell a Chevette by comparing it to a scooter, when he is unfamiliar with the scooter.
Example: He claims that you cannot replace an ASP page without restarting the server. That's controlled by the page caching setting on the server, not

He was inconsistent about how he presented his code examples. He presented examples of the HTML page that references a code page with out the code page. There are a lot of code pages with no matching HTML. This makes it difficult to go to a particular section of the book, as he seems to assume that you are reading the chapters in strict order.

Maybe I'm being too picky about a book about old technology, but still, for th eprice it should have been better. Much better.

Another excellent book. The writter not only presents the subeject very well but his was way of presenting the information and samples are well choreographed. No time wasted, to the point. Hope that he writes other books.

Sylvia B. Gonzalez, ASP.NET is really not a beginning subject. I have been in the business for more than 40 years, it is not an easy business. That is the reason they pay us well.

Just keep reading, find a book that is best for the way you learn.

This book was not helpful it does not give any exercises it jumps from one topic to another. The book is suppose to be for beginners not advanced.