Beginning ASP Databases (Paperback)

~ (Author), Kevin Spencer (Author), (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

As a tutorial, Beginning ASP Databases offers an entry point to one of the most crucial aspects of Microsoft-oriented Web development--database integration with Active Server Pages. In Beginning ASP Databases, a trio of authors covers the basics of working with databases from ASP--especially using ActiveX Database Objects (ADO).

The book is quite substantive in content but is written in a somewhat light-hearted style that makes readers new to the technology comfortable. The authors begin with a discussion of the benefits of ASP and ADO, and then explain how to configure the technology on the various flavors of Windows. From there, they show how to access databases using ADO, demystify how it all works, and focus on several key areas, including debugging, SQL, and stored procedures.

Plenty of code examples are included, and each is captioned with step-by-step explanations. Exercises and quizzes also complement the material. Throughout the book the authors identify some quite useful techniques to employ and traps to watch for--nuggets of knowledge that will set new ASP programmers on the right track. A lengthy case study ties it all together with a real-world example.

If you're planning on building Web sites on the Microsoft platform, ASP/ADO database access knowledge is essential. This fine guide offers an excellent way to get up to speed seamlessly. --Stephen W. Plain

Topics covered: ADO/OLE DB architecture, SQL, recordsets, databases and cookies, error handling, command object, stored procedures, irregular data handling, performance testing and tuning.

Product Description

Microsoft created Active Server Pages (ASP) to sew together a group of technologies for creating modern web sites, which can intelligently interact with the user at the front end and with servers and datastores at the back end. Among these technologies is ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), which allows easy, powerful and robust control of technologies that access datastores. This book explains the theory and practice of using ADO with ASP by presenting numerous examples, exercises, lists of common errors and quizzes. The emphasis is on the authors' proven teaching techniques and the presentation of the most commonly used features of ADO in ASP. If you read each chapter and do the exercises you will have a portfolio of several dozen data-intensive web pages of increasing complexity a fine return on your investment.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 825 pages
• Publisher: Wrox Press; 1 edition (September 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1861002726
• ISBN-13: 978-1861002723
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.1 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (125 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #709,253 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

114 of 114 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gem. Six stars! Should win the technical Pulizter prize., December 24, 1999

By	Stephen C Puchniak (Boston, MA / Boca Raton FL) - See all my reviews

The missing link for ASP web developers who are ready for databases connectivity. You do not need to know ASP to benefit from this book. I did not. Using a simple format the author takes you from basic ASP installation, to building HTML forms which add, delete, and update information on your local DB server. Every word in the book is carefully worded so you never second guess the author's intentions. Things to note: The book's database and scripting focus is Access and VBscript. But It is easy to create the example DB tables in SQL Server - that's what I did. Download a single file from the WROX website and all of the working examples in the book are at your disposal. You don't waste any time figuring out coding problems, Instead your main focus is reviewing the code and analyzing how it worked so well. This book is better than any $1500 ASP training course. It is the single Web development resource which connects all of the pieces together for you. Thanks John!

82 of 83 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent tutorial and overview of using ADO with ASP, October 19, 1999

By A Customer

This book is a great introduction to accessing databases using ASP. Data access is via ADO, and both Jet (MS Access) and SQL Server database examples are provided. In addition to just showing how to connect to a database through ASP, the book also shows many practical examples of when and why you would want to do so, and also provides a good case study illustrating an entire web application including such features as user logins, basic security, and cookies (as well as of course plenty of database access through ADO and dynamic asp pages).

This book would be a good first book for a programmer wanting to learn ASP and ASP Database technology, as complete code samples and explanations are provided for all asp code given, but it is also a good follow up book to Beginning ASP (ver 3.0 is about to be released)

(I was a member of the technical review team for this book, so I have read every word of the book and run every code sample.)

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wrox Publishing Scores Again!, January 12, 2001

By	JRK "jkunzvt" (VERMONT) - See all my reviews

If you aren't familiar with Wrox Publishing (great books!), Wrox has a learning tree on the back of most of their books. It helps developers determine the appropriate path and books to read to learn a specific technology. As a developer, I can't stress the importance of this enough. I therefore feel it's important to suggest that while this is a Beginning ASP book, you should have some experience coding straight Active Server Pages (no database stuff) and if you like Wrox, I highly suggest Beginning Active Server Pages 2.0 or 3.0 (I reviewed 2.0 if you need help determining which version book to get). If I hadn't gone through Beginning ASP 2.0 before doing this book, I wouldn't have gotten as much out of it. This is because the author immediately dives in to ADO in Chapter 3, assuming you are ASP-ready!

Having said that, this is a great book. I was familiar with Microsoft data access techniques (ADO, Jet, SQL language) and a little with ASP but I really needed a book to see how they all tied together. The author goes through SQL as does most any database book, but at least he uses it in the context of integrating with your ASP web pages. A great part of this book is showing how you would actually implement recordsets. In other words, he doesn't say "Here's how to bring back recordsets", he says "Here's how to bring back recordsets and display the information usefully in an ASP page". Cookies, Errors, Stored Procedures, and a full case study are all presented in later chapters. The case study was extremely helpful.

One other thing I think you may find helpful-- don't feel left out if you are only developing on a workstation with no server right now. You can still use this book. Chapter 2 is dedicated solely to showing how you can work with this entire book using/installing Personal Web Server, IIS, ADO on any Microsoft operating system, including Windows 95/98, 2000, Or NT with no server involved.