Customer Reviews

WebClasses From Scratch

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

We all know how difficult it is to find a book that is truly worthwhile. I have purchased several books on different but related topics and have been trying to synthesize the information into practical steps for a project I am working on.

Then along comes Jesse's book *Webclasses from Scratch* ! Jesse demonstrates how to use VB6, webclasses, SQL,ASP,ADO, and Javascript to produce a web-enabled database application.

I had become frustrated with getting my replacement tags to process properly. I even called Microsoft for help and the tech gave me an answer that did not work... I now see the one key element that was missing and my development schedule is back on track.

This is the ONLY book in print that *specifically* covers webclasses and Jesse does it in his own inimitable style: he assumes you are a novice VB programmer and takes it from there.

I think this is a 5 star book because it covers exactly what the title says, the example is fully functional and useful, and the style makes it very easy reading while teaching you what you want to know. Most importantly because the author demonstrates how the various technologies available to the modern VB programmer can be combined to accomplish a task.

Thank you Jesse, and I encourage you to write another one so you can cover things like how to handle rollbacks with or without MTS.

This is a great tutorial on WebClasses, and sadly one of the few books to do the technology justice. WebClasses are the Visual Basic 6.0 way to code web pages, and they rule for debugging and general maintainability. Read this book and learn why you should toss Active Server Pages in the trash (can you tell I hate ASP?). The writing is very straightforward and appropriate for someone with very little web development experience (i.e. truly "from Scratch). I lead a team of developers migrating a code base from ASP to VB 6.0 and Web Classes, and this book was very helpful for those with little web development (or even VB) experience. It briefly discusses scalability issues, but if you're looking to put up a high traffic site with the Microsoft toolset, you might be better off with Homer and Sussman's "MTS/MSMQ with VB/ASP" by Wrox.

A few months back, the company I consult for decided to experiment with webclasses. Looking for books, I found this tome in Sam's for less than $10. Since I am starting off this review with this qualifier, you should be able to tell I am not particularly enamored with this book.

If you are an beginner, and do not mind a writer patronizing you at every turn, you might actually be able to glean something from the book in between the diatribes explaining how Mr. Liberty wrote a book about almost every subject in the world of computing, as in the comment: "This book is not about object-oriented analysis and design. I already wrote one of those..." (Chapter 3) and "If that is the case, run right out and buy my misnamed book ...' (Chapter 1).

Mr. Liberty, as a C++ programmer also has a total disdain for Visual Basic, as shown in the following quote: "VB has been something of a toy I've played with in the past but not a language that I would have considered using to build a robust, extensible, maintainable, high-performance commercial application."

Mr. Liberty also shows his lack of knowledge in Visual InterDev when he states that the two tremendous drawbacks to ASP is that it is hard to debug and the code is mixed with HTML. While it is true that ASP is mixed with HTML, I would hardly say that this is necessarily a tremendous drawback. In a performance-only comparison, inline code suffers compared to compiled code, but when you consider other dynamics of application development, such as maintainability, ASP, especially when used as presentation-layer only, wins over compiled code in many ways. As to the "hard to debug" issue, this is only a problem if you a) do not know how to use the InterDev debugging tools and/or b) if you consider true debugging to be running symbolic debug information through the C++ debugging tools.

Mr. Liberty also shows his lack of keeping up with changes in Visual Basic by the use of the deprecated While ... Wend loops. This is understandable for a C++ programmer who uses VB as a toy, but should not rear its ugly head in a Visual Basic book.

In all fairness to this work, those who learn by example will find quite a bit of code to run through in this book. While the details are sketchy on many subjects, the book does cover webclasses to a certain extent. Of course, since the material is very much like a classroom experiment, you will have to figure out how to apply this to your own projects.

If you are serious about Visual Basic Internet applications, the Wrox book VB6 Web Programming is a much better bet as it covers far more than just webclasses.

Just as a previous reviewer(Thomas J. Raef) mentioned, I too have the VB6 Web Programming from Wrox. It truly pales in comparison to this book. It builds on one project, clearly states the task at hand, and in some cases digs a little deeper into what certain lines of code does. At this point I havent yet completed the book, but I already have more confidence that I know how to do this in my place of work.

I could go on forever, but the bottom line is I'd recommend anyone who wants to know how webclasses really work.

My first review of this book has been deleted, probably by the publishers clicking that it was not helpful. It is distressing to see all glowing reviews of this book because it is loaded with technical errors, bad programming practices, and ultimately you would be better off just working through the Support sample that comes with VB and have about as much information. The writing of the book is obtuse and laden with references to the fact that the author is really a C++ programmer. He really doesn't need to point that out because a VB programmer wouldn't write code this way anyway. Some outstanding errors are his use of ODBC to access the database is very passe, use ADO instead. His storing all the form variables in session variables is a real performance killer and should not be used in a site that needs to scale. Finally the code is riddled with errors that make it unrunnable. Considering that VB has autocomplete and will correct your errors, I'm not even sure how he managed to make them. Finally there are moments of just pure wrong, for example on page 135 the author writes "If the Then keyword is on the same line as the If keyword, then the End If keyword is not needed." Huh? You can't create an If statement in VB without the Then keyword on the same line. What he meant was if you only have a single statement on the same line you don't need End If. You also don't need this book. Get the WROX book instead. The Java 2 from Scratch book is an example of a good from Scratch books. This one you can scratch (off your list).

There are not a lot of books out there on the use of web classes. I'm glad to see one that focuses on the basics of WC technology. While the author may be a better C++ programmer, he certainly does not treat VB with disdain, as some have implied. Quite the contrary, he praises VB for it's ability the develop COM without the complexities needed in C++. Some of the code could be written a little differently, but for most part I found it to be sound. If you want to get up and running using WC technology for your web programming, this book will fill the bill.

I Found this book very easy to follow as Jesse explains webclasses by one big example. I miss some explaining about "extra special features", but this book is good if you want a quick start. Also look at the book "Visual Basic Developer's Guide to Asp and Iis" thoug.

I picked this up based on the reviews because they were all glowing. I would probably write a glowing review too, if I were a novice. There is a lot of opinion passed along in this book. Also, I am always leary of C++ programmers who write VB books (yet constantly remind you they are a C++ programmer). His information on ASP and Visual Interdev is a little whacked because he doesn't take into account scale adequately/correctly. He also says that a webclass scales up. To where? ASP scales to VB, but VB can only be rewritten in C++ to scale (and then the gains would be debatable). Any multi-server scaling can apply to ASP or VB equally. Visual Interdev is a fanatastic product saving hours of coding time but you won't get that here. The other red flag is when he sets up an ODBC driver to access his database, that is no longer necessary or even desirable. In fact he says you "must" set up a DSN, which is NOT true with ADO 2.1 and SQL Server 7. Use OLEDB whenever and whereever you can. I will work through the whole book for the learning experience but I will not treat this as "definitive." I would highly recommend looking around for some different perspectives before gold-plating my web development approach. The Microsoft MSDN site has a great example of a highly scalable VB web application that I would use as a free supplement to the information in this book.

This seems to me to be a great book, however I heed a warning to anyone thinking about buying this book: Make sure you have everything that this book requires (i.e. VB6, PWS or IIS, >1 gig disk space, SQL Server, and knowledge of HTML.) I had some of these but could not complete the project because I did not have all of them.

I have the VB6 Web Programming book from WROX and it pales in comparison to this one. He uses one example throughout the book and each chapter builds on the same application. His discussion on Session variables is direct and to the point. Other authors give you various alternatives and other fluff without really telling you exactly how to handle the statelessness of http. I would recommend this book to everyone wanting to create secure, powerful web sites. It's not as thick as the rest but this is a case of quality over quantity.