Customer Reviews

Designing Active Server Pages

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

As a web developer, I've been using ASP for a couple years and would consider myself and intermediate ASP programmer. I've built up a collection of books on the topic, mostly referring to WROX books for their reference quality.

ASP isn't my primary function at my job, so I don't get to work daily on developing and using my skills. I've recently been looking to improve my ability in this area, and inject some new ideas into the way I accomplish things in code. This book was the perfect answer!

If you're new to ASP or programming, you'll appreciate the emphasis on structure and conventions. If you're experienced with ASP, you'll appreciate the ideas presented here. I especially like the work on code reusability.

This is definitely one of the best ASP books I've seen in a long time.

This is a mediocre book that doesn't have a very good focus. The first four chapters are fine as introductory chapters, discussing how to pick a server-side scripting language, how to handle exceptions and "regular expressions, classes and dynamic evaluation and execution" (i'm not sure how those got lumped together!) There are two main chapters, one on form reuse (that has some reasonably useful info) and one on a reusable database admin page, which may or may not be useful. The methodology is interesting but it seems to have limited usefulness. The final chapters outline COM & how to use 3rd party COM objects. The information here is at a very high level and you would best be served by getting a book devoted to that topic.

My biggest concern with the book is that the title is hopelessly misleading. There is almost nothing on "designing" active server pages. We are instead led through a couple of administration apps and a high-level intro to COM & how to use 3rd party components. I expected information on how to structure your application, on performance issues, on scalability, on security, session & application variables, maybe even something on database issues. Unfortunately most of the author's advice seems could be summarized with "encapsulate your code: use classes, COM objects and include files".

I found that a lot of the writing seemed wordy and repetitive, unlike most O'Reilly books. Also this book seems pitched at intermediate developers, say those that are familiar with the syntax but don't have much expertise in building multi-page ASP applications. I don't think experienced ASP developers would get much out of this book, since they probably have written their own code to accomplish some of the things discussed in this book.

I wanted to give this book a good review, being a big fan of the author's web site,.... Unfortunately this book is not a keeper. If you want ASP books get "ASP in a Nutshell" (O'Reilly) for the syntax, "Developing ASP Components" (O'Reilly) if you want to get into COM and Professional Active Server Pages 2/3 (Wrox) for an excellent look at real ASP programming in an enterprise.

theres very few ASP books written that go beyond teaching you WHAT things do. this book, meant for intermediate to advanced users, delves into the WHY and HOW to do things. It teaches you how create your applications correctly, focusing on creating modular, reusable code. highly recommended.

I personally found chapter 4 to be most useful. With the new version of MS scripting runtime, you no longer need to write custom verfication to emulate the power of regular expression. And now you are able to use Class in VB Script to encapsulate functionality and build prototype system to be migrated over to VB COM later on.

While chapter 5 demonstrates a very good way for code reuse (in the light of validating forms using ASP+), it really cannot be used in commerial ecommerce system simply because the validation schema is included in the form tag itself. Malicious users can just examine your HTML source and build one of their own to remove or tweak your RegExp checks. This is the same problem developers faced when using client side form validation scripts.

Chapter 6 - Database reuse, which demonstrates how to write codes for administration interface, is just too generic to be useful. While the code itself is smart enough to get value from table for foreign keys, many times there are so many different business rules that get into the way and you cannot simply present a web-base enterprise manager to the user.

Materials in chapter 7 & 8 can be found virtually in every single ASP book and internet resources out there, why include them in this "for experienced developer" book?

Being a fan of 4guys, I was so eager when this book is out because the average ASP book out there only touch upon the techical aspect of the platform without going into the design issues of building a complete system. (If you are or have been working on designing enterprise ecommerce solution, you'll know what I mean if you have read <VB Developer's Guide to E-Commerce with ASP & SQL Server> & <Beginning E-Commerce with Visual Basic, ASP, SQL Server 7.0 and MTS>) But it really disappointed me when I finished the book within 3 hours when I get a hold of it, and to found out only 20% of the ideas presented in the book are valuable.

Anyway it's probably one of the scarce good books out there for ASP developers.

This book is an ASP developers dream. First off, if you have intermediary ASP skills, this will push you over the top. If you are quite advanced, this book is an important read to remind you of the importance of well written, reusable code. Thank you very much, rolla man!

davidj.org

This is a terrific little book. Don't expect to learn ASP from the ground up: Mitchell jumps right into the code, without wasting hundreds of pages on basics the way so many other ASP books do. Once you're familiar with the ASP world, this book is a great guide to solid coding standards. Think project design: setting up error handling, form validation, #INCLUDEs, and so on. I had already learned most of it the hard way, but it was still a pleasure to see all those things laid out so clearly.

Then Mitchell takes you on a detailed excursion into his reusable database administration pages. Clear exposition of design goals, modular design with classes, walking through unit testing: It was like a thorough, well-written code review. I had some minor quibbles with the code (mostly regarding embedding HTML tags in places I wouldn't have done). And certain aspects of the design aren't practical on large systems. But it still stands as an excellent little project and documentation example.

It's all about reuse. The author's view is that, if duplication is eliminated (when building ASP pages), then good design is achieved. Hence the title of the book is justified. Nobody will find all the material new to them but there is certainly something in it for everyone.

The main approaches presented are server side includes, VBScript classes and using COM components. The concepts are revisited throughout the book, making it virtually impossible to miss the point. Included are examples of using Microsoft's components in addition to 3rd party components for common tasks, e.g. file handling, encryption, browser info etc.

What I personally enjoyed was that there is a lot of good VBScript code (loads of examples) to support the theory and there are numerous URL links for each topic touched upon; so the reader is never really left wanting more and not knowing where to go. If I have one gripe with the author, it is her confusion of terminology when it comes to describing COM classes, COM objects and COM components. Getting an understanding of these elsewhere and then revisiting this book is recommended.

Overall, well-written & well-presented work from one of the founders of 4guysFromRolla.com

It seems O'Reilly Publishing has developed a niche for providing no-nonsense books for the intermediate to advanced user, this book is no exception.

If you are looking for your next book in ASP, to take you to the next level, this is your book. If you don't know anything about ASP, buy this book to read after you have read an introductory book.

I personally found chapter 4 to be most useful. With the new version of MS scripting runtime, you no longer need to write custom verfication to emulate the power of regular expression. And now you are able to use Class in VB Script to encapsulate functionality and build prototype system to be migrated over to VB COM later on.

While chapter 5 demonstrates a very good way for code reuse (in the light of validating forms using ASP+), it really cannot be used in commerial ecommerce system simply because the validation schema is included in the form tag itself. Malicious users can just examine your HTML source and build one of their own to remove or tweak your RegExp checks. This is the same problem developers faced when using client side form validation scripts.

Chapter 6 - Database reuse, which demonstrates how to write codes for administration interface, is just too generic to be useful. While the code itself is smart enough to get value from table for foreign keys, many times there are so many different business rules that get into the way and you cannot simply present a web-base enterprise manager to the user.

Materials in chapter 7 & 8 can be found virtually in every single ASP book and internet resources out there, why include them in this "for experienced developer" book?

Being a fan of 4guys, I was so eager when this book is out because the average ASP book out there only touch upon the techical aspect of the platform without going into the design issues of building a complete system. (If you are or have been working on designing enterprise ecommerce solution, you'll know what I mean if you have read <VB Developer's Guide to E-Commerce with ASP & SQL Server> & <Beginning E-Commerce with Visual Basic, ASP, SQL Server 7.0 and MTS>) But it really disappointed me when I finished the book within 3 hours when I get a hold of it, and to found out only 20% of the ideas presented in the book are valuable.

Anyway it's probably one of the scarce good books out there for ASP developers.

This VERY young author has done something seasoned technical writers twice his age have not often done: written an extremely useful, information and well thought out book, with plenty of implementable examples, and all in a book of less than 350 pages. It so often seems that these kinds of books suffer from "mission creep", and hence bloat into the 1500-page monsters we so often see. Because he was able to keep the scope of his task clearly in mind, he also provides a thorough "Further Reading" section at the end of each chapter, where he provides links to a number of on-line articles. (Yes, you could find these yourself, but how great that a professional in the field has taken the time to find them seek them out for you -- and I was glad all that extra stuff wasn't in the book itself.)

The one complaint I have is that the source code for this book, which you can download from the O'Reilly site, is a chaotic, inextricable mess of files with arbitrary names that are impossible to link to any specific examples in the book (I wouldn't mind that the file names are arbitrary, if he told you in the book which file a given example was associated with -- but no luck there). Really inexcusable.