Customer Reviews

Professional ASP.NET

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Over the past few months, Wrox has been rushing to be the first one on the market with tomes on some form of new technology. This rush has produced ill conceived, half-baked books like VB.NET Programming with the Public Beta, A Preview of ASP+ and Introducing .NET. Each of the was the best of class when released, but only because they were the only one that showed up on the first day.

This speed has also produced typo-full and error ridden books (for examples of misconceptions spread, see the VB.NET Preview). Many of the yearbook books (ie, tons of authors) from Wrox have also been plagued with repeats, as one author writes the same thing down in slightly different words.

I do not fault the authors for this, as I know what a hectic schedule writing can be. I also cannot fault the publisher, as long as people will buy the book.

Fortunately, Professional ASP.NET is a return to Wrox's glory days. Are there some typos? Certainly, but nothing really major. Are there any repeats? A couple, but very few. Overall, the content is well divided and the authors seem a lot better versed at the technology than they did with the earlier .NET works.

One thing that is very refreshing is examples in security, configuration, etc. Having had to eck most of this out myself, it is nice to see it from another point of view. It has given me a chance to test my own code against another way, in some cases, and to confirm my coding decisions in others.

It is also nice to see a chapter on mobile .NET applications. As these will become more important in the future, and no other book has any yet, this is a good thing. Kudos.

As with most Wrox books, there are plenty of code samples. This will help you with your own apps. Unfortunately, as of today (July 11), the code samples are not on the Wrox site. But, I expect them soon. The books tend to be a bit ahead of the code.

I hope this means that Wrox is returning to writing quality books instead of just being first. I have so many red books my bookshelf appears to be bleeding. I was wondering if the red was running out. If this book is any indication, the worm has turned.

This one is a great offering from WROX on ASP.NET!

It covers different ASP.net flavours,Garbage collection, web services, caching, datasets, windows services, threading (and thread pooling) and much more...

The book also covers the .NET Common Language Runtime (or CLR for short) which provides a level of encapsulation between the developer and the operating system, thereby making writing Windows programs simpler.So the developer will no longer have to worry about low-level details such as memory management, pointer management, language differences, and other common annoyances.

If you are an EXPERIENCED ASP Developer,currently developing with ASP 3.0, and are considering the implications of the .NET Framework, then this book is FOR YOU .It is aimed at experienced ASP developers who are working at the leading edge, rather than the casual ASP developer or beginner.You will also need Windows 2000 environment to test and run ASP.Net

As is, most examples do not work without major tweaking -- even the most simplest of examples. Many samples do not work in Beta 2 as .NET Beta 2 does not even recognize the syntax, let alone compile. Anyone who buys and reads through this book will immediately see this. Even the simple action of building a web method has changed from Beta 1 to Beta 2 and you will get an error when trying to compile.

For coders out there, in the standard WROX method, you are fed the samples in the book one line at a time without having the beginning and ending sections (i.e., not the entire code)...making it impossible to type the code manually and being able run it. WROX does offer the samples as download, but once again, the samples do not work.

I personally would wait until more ASP.NET books come out on the market. Many are scheduled soon. That way, you can be sure of examples that work. Very disappointed for such an expensive book.

This is not Professional ASP 4.0! Make no mistake, this is a first edition. Back on the author line-up is David Susman and Alex Homer (probably the best two authors at Wrox). So, here you get an intro to the .NET Framework, intro to ASP.NET, and then a lot of useful information that's intended more for look-up reference than a cover to cover read.

The book is still a bit rough, the authors do the very best they can to uncover every stone, but I believe lack of .NET experience will shine though when the second edition is released (which hopefully won't be till .NET 2.0 arrives in a few years). At any rate, if you want ASP.NET knowledge, this is your best one-stop shop.

My only (other) small compliants are: 1. The book tries to cross beginner, intermediate and advanced plans all at once. I really wonder where the Beginning ASP.NET book (already scheduled for print) will fit in. 2. Unfortunately since ASP.NET has all the power of compiled C#, VB.NET or any language in the .NET platform; one book simply can't cover all the features of the class libraries. As a result this book isn't to ASP.NET what Professional ASP 3.0 is to ASP 3.0, It would simply be impossible to create a book that contained that much information in a single volume.

I've been working with ASP.NET for over a year and running a site...about ASP.NET framework. This book is something I'm going to keep handy for a reference. It covers a wide range of topics and is full of basic and advanced topics &* source code. This book will provide a refresher every now and then on topics!. This book assumes you know something about about ASP and ASP.NET but has some introductory and history info on ASP.NET. Might be a bit of a jump for a newbie but its worth having!

Best book on ASP.NET. But don't buy this edition. Instead, get the new updated Professional ASP.NET 1.0, Special Edition, just released Feb. 2002.

Most of the .NET stuff to come out so far has been either a lot of fluff, or just redistribution of existing MSDN articles (with the exception of Introducing Microsoft .NET).

Professional ASP.NET takes off where Programming Active Server Pages+ left off. This book is over 1000 pages of details for everything .NET.

No, there isn't a C# section, but if you want to know about the GAC, how the CLR works, security, caching, and even the ASP.NET syntax, this is a great book.

You'll find that this servers more than just an introduction. I use it as a reference book now for topics that I didn't get into on the first read.

Of 24 chapters, some 4-5 give kind of equal treatment to C# and case study uses it - that's all. The rest and most, VB ad infinitum. I don't mind people writing and publishing VB books as long as they are properly declared as such. VB slant is particulary devastating in sections on databases, XML and debuging and exception handling.

Apart from that, I would have to agree that this smells way too close to MS documentation - except that MS documentation you can search to zero in on important things. That was probably the first mistake wiht this book - not realizing that MS writing belognt to different media where scattered pieces are not a problem. To that, one has to add the problem of many authors and virtually no coordination.

For example, at the beginning of chapter 8 one is faced with the shock of the claim that with ADO.NET there is no support for database locking and that everything runs in disconnected model. Someone forgot to mention that that only applies if one uses DataSet for access and out of transactions :-) Two chapters latter one learns how to use connection-based transactions - again forgetting to mention easy way to set isolation level and use DataSets.

The reference section, so much needed, is non-existent. Granted, the book is too big as it is but not because of information overload - more like letters and big screenshots overload with infomation starvation. If this book carried a title like "VB.NET First Look" it would probably get 5 stars in that category and for honesty.

Hope this is not indicator of what Wrox "Professional" books are going to be from now on....

This is a great book that not only introduces ASP.NET, but the main .NET framework classes and is updated to Beta 2 status. Almost all examples are in VB.NET. I would have liked to see more in C# as this seems to be the way that Microsoft is pushing. I would have given 5 stars for C# sample code.

Active Server Pages (ASP) has proven to be a very popular technology for web developers. The main reason for this has been ease of use. Even though ASP can run on other platforms, it is mainly found on the Windows platform. The advent of Microsoft's .NET framework has caused many people to wonder about the future of web development for windows based developers.

'Professional ASP.NET' is aimed at existing ASP developers who are considering the move to .NET. The authors begin the book with various introductions, i.e. ASP.NET, .NET framework and the main languages that it supports. The emphasis then shifts to the bread and butter aspects of ASP.NET, the server controls, data access, debugging and error handling. The book also covers some important issues such as the architecture and how to use and extend the intrinsic server controls. Chapters are also dedicated to Web Services and other devices such as phones and PDAs.

Chapter 23 is concerned with the issues involved in migrating your existing ASP applications to ASP.NET.

The final chapter is a case study of implementing a simple n-tier e-commerce application with ASP.NET.

All in all the standard of ASP books from Wrox have been high in the past and the leagacy of books such as 'Professional ASP 2.0' lives on with the latest offering. If you are a serious ASP developer then this book is essential.