Professional Active Server Pages 2.0 [Paperback]

Brian Francis (Author), Richard Harrison (Author), David Sussman (Author), Shawn Murphy (Author), Robert Smith (Author), Alex Fedorov (Author), Alex Homer (Author), Rob Smith (Author), Dave Sussman (Author), Stephen Wood (Author)

Book Description

Series: Professional | Publication Date: March 22, 1998

Building on the success of our Professional ASP book, ISBN 1861000723, this book brings the subject area bang up to date with its coverage of ASP 2.0, released as part of IIS4. Active Server Pages is the Microsoft technology which allows you to build pages dynamically, access databases easily and build secure commercial applications for use over the Internet. This book assumes a knowledge of the Internet and either JavaScript or VBScript. We cover the revised ASP Object Model and Components, then move on to look at ASP with databases, with Transaction Server and Components, with Mail Systems, with IE4, with Site Server and with Personalization Server. We also provide additional case studies to give you practical examples to adapt for your own use and a chapter focussing on the issue of securing your application.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This thorough and intelligently organized text covers all the bases for developing state-of-the-art Web sites powered by Microsoft Web technologies.

The book discusses the Internet in terms of the history of client/server systems and describes why it is a better way to deliver scaleable, maintainable systems using thin clients. It describes basic Microsoft tools, such as NT4, Internet Information Server (IIS), and Personal Web Server. The authors then move toward the basics of using Active Server Pages (ASPs) starting with basic objects (such as the Request, Cookies, and Response objects). They stress a solutions-basic approach with plenty of examples to show what's going on. Sections on Active Server Components and listings of third-party controls that can enhance your ASP Web site are particularly useful.

Professional Active Server Pages 2.0 thoroughly explains databases and ASPs, from the architecture of ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), object linking and embedding database (OLE-DB), and open database connectivity (ODBC) to the basic objects used to query and manipulate data in Web pages. The latter half of this book gives some perspective on the issues that real-world Web developers face every day. The authors discuss how to overcome the "stateless" nature of Internet using specific ASP objects. The book also includes material on the strategies for creating online communities--through Microsoft's support for chat rooms and personalizing content--Dynamic HTML, and how to use Internet Explorer 4-specific capabilities. The authors introduce new Microsoft products, such as Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) and Microsoft Message Queue Server (MSMQ), and provide a very useful case study of an e-commerce Web site for direct sales for a publisher. Other case studies show how to customize content to specific browsers and how to migrate a traditional client-side application onto an online version.

With its wide-ranging coverage of ASP technologies and excellent case studies that show useful applications at work, Professional Active Server 2.0 is the only title you will need to become a productive ASP Web developer. --Richard Dragan

From the Publisher

Anyone who needs to plan, build and maintain a web site, both on the Internet or a company Intranet will find knowledge of ASP invaluable. This book updates and expands the knowledge of programmers with an existing knowledge of ASP 1.0, and allows anyone with knowledge and experience of VBScript or JavaScript and the internet to learn this exciting server side web technology.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 1000 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 2nd edition (March 22, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1861001266
• ISBN-13: 978-1861001269
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.3 x 2.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (121 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,250,667 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but not for the average beginner, March 10, 2000

By 

Bushi (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Professional Active Server Pages 2.0 (Paperback)

First a few things about myself at the time I bought this book:

I am an amature web developer - hobby for the most part. I am not a MCSE. I am not a professional programmer.

The book moves pretty quickly after the first few chapters on the history of the web and networks. Then it jumps right into the meat and potatoes of the ASP object model for the next few chapters. You really have to read these chapters about 4 times, and if you take a week or 2 off, don't expect to retain anything. I see more stuff in there every time I read it. It is just up to you to really disect it all. It is not an easy read, but I will not let that keep my score down on it.

The examples are good at showing the discussed ideas on the page, but entire applications can be spread out over 10 pages, making it hard to just look at the whole picture. Definitely keep your highlighter handy, or you'll miss something you swore was right in front of you the last time you opened the book.

The second half of the book honestly blew me away. I am not sure if I will ever use it. It covered topics like Transactions and security and scalability, which if you are not doing this work full time is really not ever going to concern you.

Although I have not read it, I think the Beginning ASP 2.0 book would probably have been the better bet, but I guess it is just like me to want to have the "best" and bought the next one up. One book that I can recommend as a compliment is the Beginning ASP Databases. Typically it is my experience that you're going to use ASP do connect to a database and Professional ASP, although gives a descent intro to it, really should have the DB book right next to it on your shelf.

Oh yeah, be sure to have some VB programming experience, or else the learning curve gets a little longer.

One more thing, this is all good for Win98 PWS and NT4.0 IIS 4.0. If you're going to be on Win2000, you need a book on ASP 3.0.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding Book for Experienced Programmers, September 17, 1998

By 

Beowulf (Laguna Hills, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Professional Active Server Pages 2.0 (Paperback)

Let me put my review in perspective. I have been programming in one language or another for almost twenty years. I am an Internet Engineer for a Fortune 500 company. I perform contract work consisting of database design and implementation. In other words, I'm very familiar with many of the topics as they're presented in this book. Coming from this background, I found this book to be an invaluable resource.

I would NOT recommend this book to a beginner. I can't stress this point enough.

For an experienced programmer (and not just an experienced web surfer or HTML author!), the Wrox "Professional" series are a tremendous resource. Too many Internet-programming books start out with the history of CERN, HTML, ad nauseum. The "advanced" books are only useful as references, but you could never read them cover-to-cover. For me, the Wrox "Professional" books fall somewhere in between--exactly what I'm looking for.

"Professional Active Server Pages 2.0" did a great job of bringing web applications all together: from server side scripting, to client side scripting, to configuring IIS 4.0, to programming and installing Visual Basic components, to implementing transactions with Transaction Server. I found the segments regarding Internet security to be especially interesting. Although several of the examples assume a Windows NT Server 4.0 setup with IIS 4.0 and Microsoft SQL Server 6.5, I was able to implement many of them using Peer Web Services on Windows NT Workstation 4.0, Personal Web Server on Windows 98, and Microsoft Access 97.

The book does have some drawbacks: there are some pages that have incorrect code examples. Chapter six, which covers the Server Object model references many components which simply do not function as advertised. I had to purchase the "Internet Information Server Resource Kit" and install some of the components from the accompanying CD-ROM before I could use them. However Wrox does provide an errata bulletin board on their website, and there are a few discussion groups there as well that can help you through these types of problems. I even e-mailed Wrox for some of my questions, and was very grateful to receive answers straight from the authors.

If you are already comfortable with object-oriented programming, and have a reasonable understanding of the Internet, then you should find this book to be a great resource. I can't recommend it highly enough. However, the novice web programmer who is simply looking to spice up their pages with a little server side scripting would be well advised to look elsewhere.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must have ASP book!, December 4, 1999

By 

Jay - See all my reviews

This review is from: Professional Active Server Pages 2.0 (Paperback)

I picked up this book with no background in ASP. Of course I didn't understand at all. I then read Beginning ASP and got back to this one. It is indeed one of the best book on ASP 2.0. It covers databases access, security and many web development tips with lots of examples. This book is for readers who have basic knowledge in HTML, database, JScript, Vbscript and ASP. Beginning and Professional ASP are two must have books for web developers.