ASP Programming for the Absolute Beginner [Illustrated] [Paperback]

John W. Gosney (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1931841012 | ISBN-13: 978-1931841016 | Publication Date: July 15, 2002 | Edition: 1

If you are new to programming, want to learn, and want to have fun while you're at it, then this is the book for you. Teaching the major principles of programming in ASP with game programming examples, this user-friendly book is a truly unique learning tool. As you learn to program simple games with ASP, you will acquire the programming skills that you need for more serious applications and will learn how these skills can be put to use in real world scenarios.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Active Server Pages (ASP) is the standard way of doing server-side scripting under Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS). ASP offers tight interaction with Microsoft database servers, and isn't as hard to learn as you might think. With a good book at your side--ASP Programming for the Absolute Beginner is one--you can expect to be doing simple ASP work within an hour, and elaborate projects within a few days of experimentation. Progress along the learning curve requires only an open mind and a bit of diligence, as well as some careful guidance from someone who knows both ASP and the requirements of its typical users.

As the title of this book implies, it's meant for someone who's just getting going with ASP, and who in fact has chosen ASP as their first programming language. For that reason, John Gosney doesn't just show how conditional statements are implemented in ASP; he also explains why you'd want a conditional statement in the first place. Readers also learn about related subjects, such as HTML form syntax. Not all the information is elementary: there are full tutorials on connecting to Active Data Objects (ADO) databases and formulating SQL queries. The approach seems to work nicely, on the logic that assuming too little is better than assuming too much. Most programmers will be able to learn all they need to know for most ASP projects from this book. --David Wall

Topics covered: All about Active Server Pages (ASP), from square one (installing IIS 5) to the intermediate level (connecting to databases, executing queries, and presenting nicely formatted results). With several example games, the author illustrates ASP syntax, control structures, interaction with HTML forms, and connectivity to back-end databases.

About the Author

John Gosney is currently the Director of Information Technology for the Indiana University School of Dentistry, and is also an adjunct instructor for the IU School of Liberal Arts on the Indianapolis campus. John has worked in both the publishing and pharmaceutical industries as an application developer, technical writer, and training consultant. John writes extensively on all facets of the IT arena, from market analysis and forecasts to guidebooks on a variety of topics. His most recently published titles with Course include "Blogging for Teens" (1592004768), "Convert Your VHS Home Movies to DVD" (1592004822) and "HTML Professional Projects" (159200055X). John received his B.A. in technical writing and psychobiology in 1992 from Purdue University and an M.A. in English from Butler University in 1996. John, who resides in Columbus, Indiana, enjoys sports, reading, listening to music, and spending time with his family.

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Course Technology PTR; 1 edition (July 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1931841012
• ISBN-13: 978-1931841016
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,725,573 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Learn ASP --- THE HARD WAY, May 19, 2002

By 

"rmaloy" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: ASP Programming for the Absolute Beginner (Paperback)

Learn ASP -- the hard way: by acting as editor for premier press.

I bought this book because I am tired of the dummies/idiots/morons series' condescension, and found some solace in this book. However, the code is contradictory. The same line of code could be reprinted on three different pages and have three minor differences. Even the source included on the cd-rom is different than the book. To the "absolute beginner" these differences seem insignificant until you try to run the code and get only errors. I am learning ASP, but because I have to debug somebody else's code.

There are two great lessons from this book: 1) minor differences in code are crucial, 2) find a book that knows that.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent if you have no programming background whatsoever!, December 28, 2001

By 

Dennis Hellawell (Clinton, NJ USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: ASP Programming for the Absolute Beginner (Paperback)

I'm taking a course and we were given the book SAMS "Teach Yourself E-Commerce Programming with ASP". Though I think that will be an excellent reference, I felt it made assumptions that I had some basic programming knowledge beforehand. I was struggling and kind'a lost. I went thorough every book on ASP on the bookstore shelf and I selected this one to help me out. I was looking for "Active Server Page Programming for Dummies, Second Edition". That book was out of stock and I selected Mr. Gosney's book. It's very clear with good exercises. It explains installing both IIS and Personal Web Server. It relates ASP with other apps like Front Page 2000. So far it the best, introductory book that I've found. One can pretty much learn without any additional instructional help.

9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good introduction and need some improvement..., January 25, 2004

By 

Roath Kanel "Kanel" (Phnom Penh, Cambodia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: ASP Programming for the Absolute Beginner (Paperback)

I found this books is very helpful of the programmer who want to learn ASP from the beginner. However you need to know some concept from visual basic, html and some operation task in windows environment. The author explain very clearly and easy to understand. Anyway I found three point that should be change based on my experinece along with this books: 1) If you are install PWS from the windows 98se CD-ROM, it won't work. You need to find this solution from the following hyperlink to the install it successfully: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];Q246081 the books didn't cover this problem. For windows 2000 it is fine. 2) The code published in the books is too small it made me very difficult to read. 3) The most of the example of the source code is based on the game. The sample code should be focus on the read example that the technology apply for such as the real task that we might face when we get a project on web development. Base on that 3 disadvantage is the reson that I give only 4 start. If there is a future release of this book, I hope this 3 point would be change.