Customer Reviews

Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 Databases Beta Preview

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

 

 

There are several other previous ASP.NET 2.0 books available but they are all out of date as there are some major changes from beta 1 to beta 2. Beta 2 (which there's a good preview available of as of March in the form of a new "community technical preview" on MSDN) should be close to the final feature set developers will see when ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005 finally releases. So, beta 2 is now a good point for developers to get familiar with ASP.NET 2.0 in preparation for final release.
Given that the point of ASP.NET 2.0 is to build data-driven sites, Kauffman's database-centric book is a good way to look at it.
The most important change in beta 2 is ASP.NET 2.0's new ties to the "SQL Server 2005 Express Edition" product. This is detailed well in one of the early chapters here.
After that the author covers all the routine ASP.NET data techniques you'll need to know including:
Displaying data
Paging and sorting data
Filtering data
Updating, deleting, inserting data
Working with XML

Even though version 2.0 of the .NET Framework is still in the Beta stage, many publishers have released books concerning the ASP.NET 2.0 Beta. One such book is Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 Databases Beta Preview, from Wrox. This book covers the ADO.NET part of the .NET Framework 2.0 Beta. It examines almost all the concepts in a comprehensive manner with step-by-step explanations together with supporting code samples. The author begins with a basic introduction to ASP.NET 2.0 and ADO.NET. This will surely help novice developers as they can learn right from the evolution of the .NET Framework. This chapter also examines the different editors available for programming with ASP.NET, such as Visual Studio 2005 and Notepad.

Chapters 2 and 3 examine the connection aspects of database access. While chapter 2 covers Microsoft Access, chapter 3 touches on SQL Server and SQL Server Express. The author also provides coverage about connecting to other popular relational databases such as Oracle and MySQL. Chapter 5 shows the different ways by which you can display data using ASP.NET 2.0. These include the GridView and DetailsView controls. The next chapter examines in detail the usage of Cascading Style Sheets with ASP.NET 2.0 controls. Chapter 7 examines the paging and sorting aspects of controls such as the GridView. The next chapter provides a clear explanation of displaying data in list controls.

Chapter 9 shows you how to filter data from the database using different methods such as using a QueryString parameter or a TextBox value. This chapter also demonstrates how to display data using a GridView and DetailsView on the same page and on different pages. Chapter 10 examines the different ways of displaying data in templated controls with the help of source codes. Chapters 11 and 12 cover updating, deleting, and inserting data in a detailed manner. The author covers, among other things, the handling of NULLs in updates.

Chapter 12 examines the inserting of data using DetailsView and FormView controls. The author provides a detailed explanation about n-tier applications and the creation of a data access logic layer using the Visual Studio DataSet Designer. Do you have knowledge of XML? If so, you should refer to chapter 14 as it provides detailed coverage about the usage of XML with ASP.NET 2.0. The final two chapters cover data caching and handling of events. Many readers will keenly read the chapter about caching as this technique has been used by many developers to improve the performance of ASP.NET applications.

An important point to note regarding this book is that each chapter includes exercises titled Try It Out. These exercises will help readers to learn while they read the book. Moreover, all aspects are covered in a step-by-step manner.

This book includes an excellent appendix which gives a short and crisp introduction to SQL statements. Each chapter includes exercise questions, and the final appendix provides answers for the same. I feel that the author should provide multiple-choice questions as exercises rather than conventional style questions. This will help those who are preparing for the upcoming .NET 2.0 certification examinations. I also found some coding errors in the book. I hope the author will fix them before releasing the next edition of the book.

I feel that even beginners with no experience of ASP.NET can easily learn the concepts covered in this book, as it is written in easy-to-understand language. This book should find a place on the shelves of upcoming ASP.NET developers.

I have never taken the time to write a review before, but I can't ignore this one! I can't understand how this book got so many 5 star reviews! I can't believe that these reviewers were even familiar with the content of the book and its poor examples! I can only surmise that they might have an agenda of trying to increase sales by misrepresenting the product. I started the book at the beginning and suffered until about page 110. By then I was so frustrated that I couldn't continue. Approximately 20 pages out of 400 cursorily address middle tier business objects which are really the meat of database access. Usually the examples are very simple and will work. But they are so simple that they teach very little. The examples are repetitive in that they direct the reader to recreate a web form that is a minor alteration of the previous example. The learning would go much faster with a lot less text if the reader were simply directed to add the feature to the previously created web form. If the example has any complexity, it probably doesn't work, there are comments in the code that the author apologetically says that he will explain later in the book but without a clue as to where. It is far too much work to publish a book! I am sure that the author put a lot of work into it! His efforts were wasted! It appears that the book was rushed to press without planning the order of topics presented or proof reading. I don't know if this book is a reflection on other WROX books but I will be cautious about procuring another. Sorry guys, this is not meant to flame any entity but to create an awareness or consciousness of accountability for product quality. With some additional effort this could have been a much better book! On a much more positive note, I have now moved on to "ASP.NET 2.0 - A Developer's Notebook" by We-Meng Lee and feel much more productive. I can recommend it!

The author gives a lot of useful training and detail without becoming to verbose.

I found the reference setup to Microsoft's new Visual Web Developer 2005 an exciting and welcome surprise. It is so darn easy now to quickly create asp.net database webs with this awesome development platform. My [...] dynamic web chart component snapped right into environment and worked even better than in older version of Visual Studio .NET platform.

Richard Norte - AIC
Chevron

I've found other Kauffman books to be very good with a lot of details, so I had high hopes for this one. Part of the problem is the book is detailing a beta product which is obviously still in flux (and was when the book was written).

Some of the new controls (like GridView) are covered in great detail, but one of the things I really found missing was a detailed comparison of the controls themselves. For example, The gridview allows you to specify the display text if no data rows are returned, but the datalist does not. I looked and looked for this info in the book but it wasn't there. I thought it would have been easy enough to add a line about the datalist saying something to the effect of 'if you use this control, you will have to handle emtpy result sets (no rows) yourself--the control does not have this ability inherently'...

But it wasn't there and I had to dig that info up from other sources. But all in all, if are new to 2.0 and need to have a lot of data interaction, this book will be helpful.

I wish the book covered stored procedures in more detail (they are mentioned but just barely). But that's more of a personal opinion than a knock on the book. If your app is like mine and uses a lot of sprocs, you'll find the book useful for the connection and the resultset, but the command stuff is mostly geared toward general SELECT/UPDATE statements.

Hope this helps, your mileage may vary!

this is a very basic teaching and you can find all on the internet
This was a waste money.
only one star.
http://blogdoon.com

Given that we are still in Beta mode, I was not expecting a comprehensive how-to book on ASP.Net 2.0 - I found the title of the book promising and it certainly delievers. It goes through each topic methodically and in a very easy to understand manner. The walkthroughs are precise and are geared towards begginer-intermediate level, but nevertheless usefull I am sure for more experienced programmers. The only complaint is the lack of screenshots.
Highly reccomended!

I come at this from the perspective of a HTML programmer that has become a medium grade ASP Classic programmer.

Examples and "how it works" for everyday things in this book. More important you will find things that you will go back to and integrate into applications you are writing. The key is to get the concepts.

I recommend it.

I can see that three other people gave five stars for this book. That is absolutely impossible. These people must be friends of the author. This is the worst computer book I have ever read. There are so many mistakes in the text it is impossible to count them. The errata sheet will have more pages than the actual book. Do not waste your time or money. The author must have written this while he was drunk. The editors must have edited this book while they were high. The publishers are just a sorry bunch.