ASP .NET Developer's Guide

by Greg Buczek

Paperback: 900 pages
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing
ISBN: 0072192887; (December 13, 2001)

Best-selling author and ASP expert Greg Buzcek shows you all you need to know to master ASP .NET -- the widely-anticipated, next generation of Microsoft's Active Server Pages. Also, on the CD-ROM, you'll find all the code from the book, as well as bonus application solutions not found inside the book.

From the Back Cover: Your Professional Resource for Developing ASP.NET Applications.

Delve into the next generation of Active Server Pages with this comprehensive resource. Featuring complete details on syntax, structure, and controls, this book explains how ASP.NET offers a revolutionary new approach to developing dynamic content for the Internet or an intranet. Using an object-driven approach to development, the book explains how to code in a variety of namespaces, manage data from multiple sources, and work with IIS and server directories. Plus, ASP.NET Developer's Guide features three chapters of sample applications--including code--that will allow you to develop a product catalog, shopping cart, and customer management e-commerce solutions.

Create and manage robust, extendable applications Use Web services to share libraries and data with different operating systems and servers Incorporate standard HTML and ASP elements Manipulate database information through the Web and manage Web site content Control rendering in individual browsers Integrate the ASP.NET Mobile Web SDK into your development portfolio Implement an online store featuring rotating products, shopping carts, and order management Develop interactive solutions for company intranets.

Customer Reviews
I used the ASP Dev Guide - and this one is just as good., February 25, 2002
Reviewer: A reader from Kansas City, MO
Mr. Buczek's ability to summarize information and distill it down to what I need to write my application is great! I bought both of his ASP.NET books based on how much I used the previous ASP books. His approach to explaining the use of ASP.NET seems to be this: provide the information the reader has to have to actually create an application. I find his explanations of how ASP.NET is incorporated into the programming environment very helpful since I don't always understand how the products that have to be used relate to each other. Great job and thanks!

Lots of thunk, January 30, 2002
Reviewer: Gregory A. Beamer
I am beginning to get the idea that McGraw Hill works for shelf presence rather than content. Their ASP.NET books are weighing in at a lot of pages, which rates high in thunk factor (the sound a book makes when dropped on a table). If you are interested in a nice thick book, you will find it here; beware, however, as the book uses large fonts and lots of white space.

I am also impressed that Greg Buczek uses CodeBehind in parts of his book. So many of the ASP.NET books on the market fail to separate code and tags, which is one of the best parts of the paradigm of .NET. It seems more like an afterthought, however, as he calls it an advanced topic. This is correct if you come from an ASP background perhaps, but separation of code and UI (tags) is a core part of the .NET programming paradigm.

Much of the book deals with different controls that you use in a page. I will not belittle this point, as Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework do a lot of work for you. You will be over 300 pages into the book before the song changes to .NET Framework objects.

There are only about 60 pages on data access, which is two chapters: OLEDB and SQL providers. This is the weakest part of the book, and my reason for rating the book a bit lower than average. Data is critical to Enterprise applications and 60 pages, esp. with such large fonts, falls way short.

The thing I find the most "cool" in the book is the chapter on the Mobile SDK. The .NET mobile controls are a nice addition, and make creating applications for cell phones and PDAs a breeze.

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Books Subjects

Learning ASP.NET

ASP.NET Reference Manual

.NET Application & Database

ASP.NET Training Course