Customer Reviews

Professional Active Server Pages 3.0 (Programmer to Programmer)

5 star:		(50)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Being an enterprise web developer, I found this book to be the absolute best in its field. It covers a very wide spectrum of fields any web developer working with Microsoft web technology should know, including ADO, ADSI, ASP, CDO, COM+, error handling, MSMQ, Windows DNA, XML, and a whole lot more (note that this book is primarily oriented at web developers who's target platform is Windows 2000 and IIS 5.0, but I also found it to be extremely useful for use on Windows NT 4.0 and IIS 4.0, since the authors clearly indicate features that are new to Windows 2000 and IIS 5.0). The writing style is absolutely excellent and gives clear tips on code optimization and performance. I have read literally dozens of different books on these subjects, and none has come close to this one. Although this book is not for beginners, it is, in my opinion, good for anyone who wants to advance their career on the web or become an web developer. This is definitely a book you will want to read from cover to cover, and use as a reference. At just about any price, it's a steal.

It is a very comphensive book that covers the basic of ASP 3.0 and other web technologies like XML, COM+, and ADSI, etc. I did hestitate before buying this book from the web since I was only playing with the beta version of Win2000 server. However I need to work with ASP and IIS, therefore I bought this book.

This book does cover lots of new things compared to Professional ASP 2.0 The new features of ASP 3.0 are briefly introduced in the chapter 1. There is a good coverage of ADO 2.5 in chpater 8. If you are familar with ASP 2.0, you can finish the first 10 chapters and can grasp the differences quickly. XML, IIS 5, active server components, COM/COM+, ASP Script Components, C++ component issues, ADSI and Active Directory, Message Queue Server, Collaboration Data Objects, Exchange Server integration, certificates, site load balancing, and ASP Object Model are introduced from chapter 11 to 27. These are heavy readings with minor typos. However these chapters worth the money.

I have the Beginning and Professional ASP 2.0 Wrox books and the OReilly ASP book. I like Wrox better since they use lots of examples and their teaching style is very practical. This is a must have ASP book for many web developers.

This book is a must have for all levels of ASP developers. The book is very clearly written and contains tons of ASP code examples. The book covers all aspect of ASP including the changes from ASP 2.0, data access using ADO, OLE DB, developing ASP components using VB, VC++, adding messaging to your asp pages, adding email support through CDO and more... I wasted no time in adding this book to my list of favorite VB internet programming books on my "Visual Basic Book Review " web site.

I had the prior Wrox book, and I also have the O'Reilly ASP, but this one is a standout piece of work. It is thorough, covering everything from basic ASP to advanced ASP, with stops along the way for MTS/XML/XSL and related technologies.

While I've found a few errors, they are mostly typos and I've run across no real deal-killers. Somewhat surprisingly, the book is well-written and gets its points across directly and with a minimum of fluff and arm-waving.

Highly recommended.

By far the best book available for VBScript and ASP development that I have run across. For the information in this one book, you could easily purchase 10 others and still not have the same content.

This book is called *Professional* Active Server Pages -- and rightfully so. Believing that I was on the Professional level, I purchased this book and read most of it before placing it on my desk at work for reference. Every once and a while I picked up this book with a specific ASP question in my head and tried to find the answer within its pages. This was a mistake.
If you're looking for a reference book, check out *Beginning* Active Server Pages -- also by Wrox press. Otherwise this book is great. The sections on ADO and XML are well written as well as the performance tuning sections. There is information on these pages that I haven't found elsewhere and for that reason alone, this is a great book to read.
My only complaint is that there seems to be a lack of good examples. The text does contain some examples, but sometimes the concepts can overcome the reader and there needs to be a bit more clarification. More pictures, code examples and general explaining would have been very helpful.
Overall, I've been very happy with this book. Wrox Press has been turning out some great books with the Web Applications Developer in mind and I hope they keep up the good work.

It's really cool! If you really want to UNDERSTAND ASP, please read it but not "Beginning ASP".

It is a little difficult for beginners. But if you are familiar with COM, it is OK and give up "Beginning ASP" and directly delve into this book.

By the way, this book has a previous edition "Professional ASP 2.0". It is as excellent as this book. I think, if you have NT4.0/98, you'd better read 2.0; if you have Win2000, definitely read 3.0.

This is a must have ASP book for many web developers. It covers everything with ASP. I have ASP 2.0, but it does not do a good job in a way. This book(3rd edition ) have many good examples , but if it gives more comprehensive examples, I would rate this book 6 stars.

This book covers ASP 3.0 in great detail. It not only gives you very well chosen, hands-on examples, but it also tells all the underlaying theory that other books lack. It thoroughly covers every aspect of ASP, including working with cookies, session-management and database-access. All the section are very well introduced and a very good summary at the end of each section will ensure you won't lose the big picture. This book actually goes beyond ASP... It will help you start developing COM components in Visual Basic, give you performance and security tips and it even shows you how to use XML. In short: The definitive Bible to ASP 3.0!

Professional Active Server Pages 3.0, by Alex Homer, is
a book on developing web applications using Active
Server Pages 3.0. This book goes in depth into
developing web applications with discussions and
examples on advanced topics such as, CDO/Microsoft
Exchange Server, ADO/Microsoft SQL Server, and
ADSI/Active Directory. Homer presents the reader with a
wealth of information on advanced enterprise level
topics based on Microsoft technologies. This book is
excellent for intermediate/advanced users who wish to
learn about Active Server Pages using Microsoft
technologies, however due to the fact Homer does not
goes in depth with fundamentals of programming Visual
Basic Script, this book should not be recommended to
novice developers.

Throughout the book, Homer discusses the importance of
COM/COM+ and what that technology can do for your web
application. He writes examples of a COM+ component in
Visual Basic and shows the user how to register/load
the component into memory along with utilizing the
functionality of them in an Active Server Page. Homer
further explores the features of Windows 2000 by
introducing the features of Active Directory and
explaining/demonstrating how ADSI can connect an Active
Server Page to the Active Directory. The book goes into
further detail on enterprise level topics by discussing
how CDO interfaces with Microsoft Exchange Server.
Using CDO, a developer can access all of users Exchange
account information including mail, contacts, calendar,
etc. The book ends with performance and security issues
for web applications running on a Windows 2000 Server
and how an administrator should configure a Windows
2000 Server for maximum performance and security.

The software/technologies the book uses are based on
products/technologies developed by Microsoft. Since
Active Server Pages is a Microsoft technology, it would
be reasonable to use only Microsoft
products/technologies. However, in the real world, many
businesses have heterogeneous environments with Oracle
database servers and JavaScript web developers. The
fact that this book only exposes the reader to vendor-
specific technologies could be a down fall, however
creates a centralized focus for the reader.

This book covers a wide spectrum of advanced knowledge
with Active Server Pages, however is completely based
around Microsoft technologies. Several other authors
composed this book, which helps the reader get a
dynamic flavor of knowledge from chapter to chapter as
one can see. Any intermediate/advanced web developer,
interested in enterprise web application development,
should purchase a copy of this book for reference
purposes.