Customer Reviews

Beginning ASP .NET 2.0 E-Commerce in C# 2005: From Novice to Professional

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you're reading this then you're probably new to ASP.NET 2.0 or you want to build an online store using ASP.NET. This is money well spent. This book is an excellent step-by-step tutorial for building an online store. AND it's just packed with ASP.NET, C# and SQL Server programming tips. I bookmarked these tips as I was building my web site and now I find myself turning back to it to implement these goodies.

The authors have outdone themselves. I really really like this book. I own the 2002 Wrox version as well so I can tell you that "ASP.NET 2.0 E-Commerce in C# 2005" has been completely updated! It is a fantastic tutorial for anyone new to ASP.NET and the best reference for more experienced programmers who may be new to e-commerce. The authors will walk you through (in detail) the creation of a fully functional online store.

One nice feature is that the authors don't assume anything. They explain each step as the book progresses. Are you in a hurry? No problem. The first few chapters are enough to get a basic store up and running. Subsequent chapters continue to build onto this existing solution. So you can get started fast and then add on features as you learn or have time.

I also find this book to be a valuable reference to more experienced programmers because it is chock full of developer tips. There is a great example of building a key word search, and search ranking system with SQL Server. The authors touch on error handling and how to show custom error messages in a way that anyone will find helpful. Other handy tips include:
* Real-word examples of how to use SQL OUTPUT parameters.
* How to send automatic email alerts when the application encounters an error.
* How to use C# static classes to cache information and improve performance.
* How to build an order pipeline!

The information on using PayPal's payment gateway, PayPal API and credit card processing is worth the cover price alone. There are five chapters on how to wire up your own order processing system. There's even a whole chapter devoted to integrating your ASP.NET web site with Amazon's web services.

I highly recommend this book for anyone new to ASP.NET or new to e-commerce. It's hands down the most thorough ASP.NET e-commerce book I've ever read. And I can also recommend it to more experienced programmers who are looking for a good e-commerce reference. Don't let the title fool. It's a great tool for anyone who wants to make money using ASP.NET. I cannot say enough good things about it so I'll close with the table of contents...

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Starting an E-Commerce Site
2. Laying Out the Foundation
3. Creating the Product Catalog: Part I
4. Creating the Product Catalog: Part II
5. Searching the Catalog
6. Improving Performance
7. Receiving Payments Using PayPal
8. Catalog Administration
9 . Creating a Custom Shopping Card
10. Dealing with Custom Orders
11. Making Product Recommendations
12. Adding Customer Accounts
13. Advanced Customer Orders
14. Order Pipeline
15. Implementing the Pipeline
16. Credit Card Transactions
17. Integrating with Amazon
A: Installing the Software
B: Project Management Considerations

This book is simply the best book on ASP.NET 2.0 when working with Databases. Not only does it help with E-commerce but you can apply the principals to other programming projects for dynamic websites. The Author responds to e-mail questions VERY QUICKLY with helpful responses. There simply isn't another book that covers ASP.NET 2.0 better. I have used many books but none had as helpful of an author as Christian Darie.

This would be the best book for introducing someone new to asp.net 2.0. The book is very practical and does it job
educating the idiot like the beginning word suggests in its title. I have notice in later chapters 8 onwards where the author refers to a control when the code is hard coded into
the aspx page. This can be confusing in a beginner book.
I felt that the authors did not do justice by giving partially completed code from chapter 12 onwards. My motivation kind of died after that since there was alot of compilation errors and so forth for a beginners book. It is hard to understand how the other reviewers where able to get the rest of the code running without going through the same problems that I am having.
Unfortunately like other programmers I don't have time to debug author's code.

This book covers it's topic E-Commerce very well. It also takes advantage of the new features found in ASP.Net 2.0 including some of the new ADO features. If you are getting ready to setup an E-Commerce site I highly recommend this book. I also recommend it for beginning developers wanting to know more about ADO and database design.
The authors have a great approach to design that anyone doing E-Commerce would do well to follow. Better yet they mention the pros and cons of different approaches and explain why they chose their approach. I've been thrilled to learn some new strategies to improve performance that I hadn't considered before as well as some new features in ASP.Net and ADO 2.0 that I wasn't aware of.
The only negative, for me, is the database as well as ADO basics this book spends many pages covering. However there's plenty of worthwhile content to justify the price. So if you are familiar with database design and have a working knowledge of ADO you can just skip past those pages. I do recommend you skim thru them though as, like me, you may learn some new 2.0 features you weren't aware of.
The book covered all my E-Commerce questions: catalog design, how to scale up/performance considerations, SSL, Security issues, credit card processing, and costs involved. They even point you in the direction of a few recommended credit card processing businesses. Best of all they approach the site creation in such a way you can quickly get up and going and then later on focus on fine tuning payment options and really making the site standout with features.

There's not much more I could add to these reviews, because they are the exact same thing that I have been telling every one concerning this book. The thing I can add about this book, and all of the other ones Cristian has written is this: When ever you look through his errata sections for any corrections to the books, you'll mostly just find corrections to the paragraphs with descriptions, and not the code. It's as solid as it gets, solid as it gets. Most books that I own have at least two very garish errors, or typos in the code examples it's self.

In all his books you'll find the best practices you could ever find, so it's almost recomended to pick up this book (or the PHP version of the same book) when initially learning ASP.net 2.0, because you'll learn a lot more in a lot less time than reading tomes on the details and theory that a lot of the other books offer.

The man is better than a master of his craft, and his books are some of the best books you'll ever read world wide. He makes even the hardest technical chalanges fun and friendly, and in the end, you'll feel encoraged to want more.

This was the first programming book that I have ever picked up that actually had a readable tone. Microsoft Press and O'Reilly books are so unreadably blah that I have yet to finish one.
This book explains it all. If you have a basic understanding of programming then this book can help you learn alot of ASP C# features. The book also explains and walks through the design of relational data tables and writing stored procedures. I will stop and just say it covers it all, start to finish!
I cannot stress how readable and easy to understand this book is. I'm am going to try another Apress book and hope the readability is consistent and that it wasn't just the authors.

in 3 days i've learned more than a year studing without a book. I was wery doubtfull to buy or not. Once received I've really jumped on new level of understanding ASP.NET.
FANTASTIC BOOK.

This book is a masterpiece. The title is a little misleading (in a good sense) as the book not only covers ASP.NET but also the basics of SQL Server and ADO.NET programming. This book is not for a novice though. You need a good grasp of the fundamentals of .NET Framework, ADO.NET and ASP.NET. A lot of areas are touched upon including T-SQL programming, ADO.NET programming, Serialization, Cryptography, Credit card payment integration, Web Services and ofcourse ASP.NET. As suggested by one of the reviewers, there is tons of code to write but when you complete the book you would have gained a lot of knowledge and surely be pleased. Easily one of the best books that I've read. Deserves more than a 5 star.

Once again Christian Darie strikes again. Having originally read his first venture into e-commerce books back in ASP.Net 1.1 (written in vb.net) I was already aware of the excellent writing style perfect for any developer.

Now, wanting to learn C#.net and in the latest language this has been the perfect 'next step' to selling instant online shops with speed and ease of use.

This book has been written superbly, I've been taking my time going through it after work and generally only doing around one chapter a day, very easy to pick up wherever you leave it and well documented if you forget!


Great book if you're looking for a quick step-by-step tutorial on creating online shops with C#.net, and ASP.Net 2.0 in general. Also, it is an excellent foundation for good programming techniques and basis for more advanced c#.net pages in the future.

In the latest eCommerce project I started late last year, I wanted to reduce time to implementation, lower cost, and increase quality. I looked at this book to see if there were more streamlined, optimal techniques and technologies in .NET for eCommerce. This material does provide concrete ideas of how .NET 2.0 can be used to deliver a simpler technical architecture. This allows you to produce a more elegant solution that meets business and technical objectives.

For a balanced view, there is also the ASP.NET eCommerce Starter Kit from Microsoft that shows other newer techniques using dynamic Membership profiles. I recommend checking that out in conjunction with this book.

Ultimately I arrived at newer techniques but the material effectively accelerated the conceptual process. So even if you are an old hand at this stuff, I believe you will see opportunities to make your solutions more maintainable, higher in performance, and open to functional evolution.