Beginning E-Commerce with Visual Basic, ASP, SQL Server 7.0 and MTS (Paperback)

by Matthew Reynolds (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Beginning E-Commerce offers an excellent demonstration of full-featured e-commerce Web-site construction with the Microsoft suite of development tools. If VB is your language of choice and ASP is your Web scripting selection, this tutorial is a must.

This book has very little general coverage of e-commerce. The entire text is devoted to the step-by-step construction of "Jo's Coffee," a fictitious Web storefront that winds up at the end of the book with a sophisticated order-processing pipeline, online discussion groups, XML integration with outside systems, and much more. In the introduction, the book sets a lofty goal: "... to take you gently from knowing nothing about e-commerce, to a point where you'll be able to put up a Web site that will make money for your business." This text meets this goal for readers who are familiar with the development tools mentioned in the title.

The book does a great job of providing complete commentary for each stage of the development process. It walks the reader through defining an application object model, implementing it with VB COM components, interfacing with a SQL Server database, and adding a number of sophisticated features. One of the most interesting techniques illustrated in this title is a VB COM component-based order-processing pipeline similar to the type found in Microsoft's top-of-the-line Site Server product. Using the example in this book, developers could easily construct custom pipelines for every commerce site they build.

If your core competencies lie in Microsoft-based technologies, this book is a wise investment in the future. It offers eye-opening possibilities for creating your own industrial-strength e-commerce sites. --Stephen W. Plain

Topics covered: COM and e-commerce object models, product catalog, shopping basket, checkout, order processing, promotions, certificates, pipeline construction, transaction management, deployment, e-mail integration, discussion groups, XML integration, and marketing tips.

Product Description
Discusses all the practical steps needed to build an e-commerce site. Reveals how you can build a fully functional e-commerce site, which will support selling over the Internet, by following the development of an example Web site for a small business. Softcover.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 600 pages
• Publisher: Peer Information; 1st edition (March 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1861003986
• ISBN-13: 978-1861003980
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.3 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,097,582 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Most Thorough Book on eCommerce, for Beginners...and Better, August 8, 2000

By	Maxime Bombardier (Montreal, Canada) - See all my reviews

As an Internet consultant for almost 5 years, I'm often asked by Internet newcomers: "Okay, What do I need to take on/learn today; Networking? VB? ASP? SQL? Server-IIS? something else?". And since the answer is "Well, All of them of course.", people are still short a good way to start on each of those.

Well Wrox brought a very good book for those Internet startups (with Microsoft technologies). You will most definitely find an answers to all of your first questions on the How-To of an eCommerce web site.

Actually, the real title of this book would have been too long to fit since it does more than VB, ASP, SQL, and MTS. To my surprise, it also goes over Credit Card security with 3rd parties such as DataCash and CyberCash, it goes over simple Private/Public Key Pair, Order Pipeline, Hosting, Up-sell, Cross-sell, and even Marketing, + more.

Also, I have to admit that the coding used is well-formed, neat & clean, and extensive. I'm sure that the example would bring new content to some seasoned eCommerce expert as well.

Last but not least, if you are a complete newcomer in the programming area, you might want to consider having other book such as Beginning ASP 3.0, Beginning ASP Databases, Beginning VB6; at the same time than the Beginning eCommerce in case you are not sure of what the syntax means. Even though this book is pretty easy to follow, it also assume you have some programming knowledge (which can be overcome by those other books).

Good Job.

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Unscalable E-Commerce Application, October 18, 2000

By	NILESH ROY (New Delhi, INDIA) - See all my reviews

I just completed this book and i have doubts weather the application architecture and object model used in this book is correct. 1) The author does not uses Stored Procedure's, which is the recomended way of creating scalable application's on Microsoft Platfrom. 2) The author does not tells us weather the database will reside on the same machine as the web server or it will reside on a different machine(which is the case in most big installations). If the database is on a different machine a number of issues are to be covered like data marshalling, which is not covered. The business objects in the book open a recordset for entering data and have SQL embeded in them. All this database related functionality could have been deliniated to another component residing on the databse server. 3) I think all the problem in the application lies because the author does not split the Object's in his application into two parts one containing Business functionality and another containing Data Acess related functionality. This is the prescribed architecture by Microsoft and an excellent example on this architecture is the FMSTOCKS sample application available in MSDN. 4) Lastly, the author creates an Interface, so that the presentation tier in his application is not able to acess the database and the presentation tier(ie. asp code) is able to acess the other objects only through Visit object. He could have made only visit object publicily creatable. That would have been an easier solution, especially for a so called Beginer's Book. However this book cover's a lot of topics and is a useful book, to give an insight into E-Commerce application development especially for those who are intermediate VB & ASP programmers. The sample application is good and with few changes could be used in commercial applications. This book does give insight into some new and important topics. There are number of topics which are not clearly explanined especially Chapters3,5 and 6 where the author builds his application iteratively, rest of the book is excellent. I am giving it 3stars only because of the above three chapters and above mentioned faults Otherwise this book would have got 5Stars. Lastly this book can not be classified as a Beginer's book, i would recomend buyers of this book to first read Begining ASP, Begining VB and VB6.0 Business Object before reading this book, otherwise they would not be able to get 100% out of this book.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Dog's Bollocks, April 7, 2000

By	P. Howells (Halifax, England) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

You need to read a few other books (preferably Wrox one's) before you get stuck into this, but nevertheless this is a very easy to follow book, and contains some great HTML and ASP tricks to make your e-commerce application more maintainable and scalable. I suggest reading "Beginning Components for ASP" and "Beginning ASP" from Wrox before reading this. What's more it's written by a Brit so it can't be bad (not that I'm biased at all ! ).