Developing ASP Components [Paperback]

Shelley Powers (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 15, 1999

The popularity of Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASP) technology is growing rapidly. Part of the reason is ASP's flexibility: the output of ASP scripts is most commonly HTML, which is included in the text stream returned to the client, making it a convenient way of creating browser-independent web content. But an additional reason--and one that will become more and more important over time, as web applications replace web pages--is its extensibility. And the most effective way to extend ASP is to develop custom ASP components.

However, the techniques for developing custom ASP components, along with the snags and pitfalls of developing custom components, are not well documented. In addition, to successfully develop ASP components one must be a jack-of-all-trades: programming requires some knowledge of COM, of threading models, and of the ASP object model, as well as a mastery of one or more language tools and development environments.

That's where Developing ASP Components comes in. The first section of the book explores the topics all developers need to know to develop components for ASP effectively:

• The configuration of the ASP development environment
• ASP components and the Component Object Model (COM)
ASP components and threading models
• ASP components and the Microsoft Transaction Server, which can be used to provide a variety of services to ASP components
• The objects, properties, methods, and events available in the ASP object model

Because more and more developers find themselves using more than a single language tool, the remaining three sections of the book each focus on ASP component development using any of the three major development tools: Microsoft Visual Basic, Microsoft Visual C++ and the ActiveX Template Library (ATL), and Microsoft J++. Each section carefully focuses on the issues that concern the ASP component developer who is using that particular development environment. These include:

• Accessing ASP's intrinsic objects
• Accessing data using either OLE DB (in the case of C++) or ADO (in the case of VB and J++)
• Creating n-tier web applications with VB
• Handling persistence using MFC along with Visual C++/ATL
• Accessing native code (the Windows libraries, which are written in C) from J++

This thorough coverage of the background information needed for developing ASP components, as well as its focus on the component development in each of three major development environments, makes Developing ASP Components the definitive resource for the ASP application and component developer.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Developing ASP Components offers comprehensive instruction for creating and implementing server-side components for the Microsoft Web server platform. You can build Microsoft components with different languages, and author Shelley Powers covers the bases with equal coverage of Visual Basic, Visual C++, and Visual J++ development.

The first part of the book offers a very readable introduction to Active Server Pages (ASP) components, the Component Object Model (COM), thread implementation, and transactions. This section explains how the elements of the ASP processing environment work together and forms the foundation for the remainder of the book. Inside this overview, the author is careful to point out differences among the trio of featured programming languages.

The next section covers Visual Basic component building, access to ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), and building multiple-tier ASP components. This section illustrates how an easy-to-use language like VB can offer great productivity. C++ is then covered, with a focus on the language's additional control and, in particular, possibilities for object linking and embedding database (OLE DB) data access. For Java, the author includes coverage of JavaBeans and data access with the Windows Framework Classes (WFC).

With proper focus on the key aspects of each language and plenty of practical examples, this title squarely hits the mark as a guide for budding ASP developers. --Stephen Plain

Review

'For the developer wanting to create their own ASP components, this book provides an excellent starting point and technical reference resource. It's accurate, readable and well organized. Looking at the errata lists on the O'Reilly web site exposes the high level of accuracy and attention to detail that have gone into this book. Almost all of the corrections are in the further reading sections that accompany each chapter and most are changed URLs (which is more a reflection of the problems associated with the web than the quality of the book)... What more can be said, if you are serious about writing your own ASP components, take a look at this book.' - Dave Rutlidge Cvu, February 2001 --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 507 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 ed edition (July 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565924460
• ISBN-13: 978-1565924468
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,498,410 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Terrific for new ASP programmers, January 21, 2000

By 

M. J KILLEEN (Collingdale, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Developing ASP Components (Paperback)

If you are one of the many programmers who have recently moved to ASP -- you will greatly appreciate this book. This was the first book I read that fully explores how to leverage the technology you already know well (VB, C++, or Java -- with examples throughout) and leverage that to write powerful ASP Components (DLLs) that can do most of the work you need including data access and HTML generation. Theres a textbook examination of COM for those who like that sort of thing, but you can jump right in to the parts on MTS and separate sections on the development tool of your choice. Well worth studying.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Book, but.., November 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Developing ASP Components (Paperback)

This is a good book on ASP components and gives a good introduction. It covers developing ASP components with VB,java and VC++. Only thing is lot of information(like if you mainly use VB, you won't be reading the stuff on VC,Java) may not be required and you can get lot of similar information from other COM books(like Distributed components - Ted Pattison).So maybe you won't want to buy a book on just ASP components and rather spend the money buying a book that covers COM in more detail.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is the only one that actually covers ASP COM, August 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Developing ASP Components (Paperback)

I read this book and in a matter of a week I was up and running ASP components and interacting with MTS. This book will teach you not only how to program your components in VB but also VC++ and VJ++. The book also teachs you how to setup your components in MTS and what exactly each option means in the MTS component setup. If you can only buy one book about ASP and COM this is the book. This is also a good book for VB programmers looking for an introduction to web developing.