Customer Reviews

Visual Basic Developer's Guide to E-Commerce with ASP and SQL Server

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the best book I have found on the mechanics of actually building a moderately complex e-commerce site. Unlike many books which wander off into irrelevant areas, this one stays very focussed. The level however is fairly advanced. The author doesn't waste time explaining setup details so you will need to be comfortable with SQL Server, InterDev, creating DSNs, SQL and ASP code. There are a few bugs but these are covered in the author's web site where he even answers questions!

Great book. Anyone needing to get up to speed on building e-commerce solutions, this is the book for you. It takes you from soup to nuts and clearly explains all of the technology pieces and provides excellent code.

This book gives an in-depth overview of technologies used to create e-commerce web applications with Microsoft technologies. It is great as a reference of SQL and ASP procedures, which can be readily used. The code examples are comprehensive and complete. I wish however, that the presented examples would be more consistent. For instance, the database design contains special tables for Product Attributes, but the Shopping Basket table does allow only for Color and Size attribute. Another issue is, that every ASP page accesses SQL script to fill the session variables, which should be set only once. I think, that the second thought may be given to this book for the next release, and then it will deserve much higher ratings.

Jerke does an excellent job of explaining all of the key concepts and programming techniques of building an E-Commmerce store with ASP and SQL server. There are a few minor code glitches but the author has anwers to these on his web site. I HIGHLY recommend it!

This book does exactly what is says on the cover. It is a very good guide to building online stores with ASP and SQL Server. The sample online store and the associated code samples are both extensive and comprehensive. It successfully explains the underlying business model, database design and table structures, together with a few ASP tricks.

A minor annoyance is that the code is given and dissected before a view of the related screenshot is shown. I found myself constantly trying to find the screenshot and then looking back at the underlying code.

All the criticisms I have of the book are in part answered by the book, but not with enough detail or consideration. For example, it is typically preferable to use COM components instead of putting all the code in ASP, and to use a database instead of Session variables to store state information for truly scalable sites. Perhaps all this `advanced' information could have expanded the final (and too brief!) chapter on `Best Practices and Scalability'

No information given on the use of transactions, even though there was the code for the related processing of Orders and Payments and Baskets (chapter 8) that certainly needed it.

This book should take the user's level of experience from beginner to intermediate.

Having worked my way through most of this book I have to downgrade it to 4 stars. There are a number of frustrating bugs which slow down development. Rather than just list the bugs and supply fixes, the author Jerke tells visitors to trawl through the various discussions on his web site - not helpful. Don't look for explanations on how to create SQL databases, DSNs etc. because there aren't any. It is still a good book, but not for beginners.

At the time I was presented this book I could build some nice websites with HTML, but had no real ASP experience. The title is misleading as there is very little Visual Basic information inside. What there is however, is a functional sample store on the included CD, along with explanations of most of the code. You get the SQL Server database, and all the ASP files. I ended up building a very nice e-commerce site by modifying and building upon the existing sample store. This in itself made the book worthwhile. This book is best suited for someone who has some ASP and some SQL Server knowlege already - and needs to build a modest e-commerce site. It will get you started in the right direction. It will not help you learn Visual Basic.

The book is well structured with rich knowledge. The author focuses on asp coding as well as e-commerce concepts. In order to finish up this book, you must be able to handle Microsoft SQL server (basic operation) and know how in asp scripting.

How much is this book? worth thousands dollars. The included source code is a full function enterprise online store, better than most of commercial packages.

Enjoy this super asp book. Big thank you to Noel, really appreciate your great works.

This book is simply nice, not more, not less, to those one-man show people that creates the Internet.

This book is defining one approach, using the Microsoft tools (those before the 2k series (Win2k, Exchange 2k, SQL 2k, etc.). It will show you how to set up a general development environment for both ASP, VB, and SQL. It also shows how they created from scratch all of those like what was the thinking for the SQL part, how it interacts with VB components & ASP files.

Good reading for beginners to intermediate web people. For the other one, it will be a light read since I see that the author's coding is somewhat not much optimized.

I have to start by saying that I agree with most of the revies I have seen on this book here: It's a good reference to Microsoft products. However, I feel that there is something else that must be addressed: the gross amount of errors in the code itself. There are variables that are dimentioned only to not be used in some of the actual pages (chrFax). This book is meant for an Intermediate user, so for those readers that expect to open the book and be on your way to making shopping carts be careful, the author assumes a lot out of you. May seem like minor quibbles, but I'm only up to Chapter 9 and the errors are almost too much to deal with.