ASP.NET: Tips, Tutorials and Code

by Scott Mitchell, Donny Mack, Stephen Walther, Doug Seven, Bill Anders, Adam Nathan, Dan Wahlin

Paperback: 900 pages
Publisher: Sams
ISBN: 0672321432; 1st edition (August 23, 2001)

Instead of having to learn everything about .NET all at once, ASP.NET: Tips, Tutorials, and Code offers a better way to start using the new ASP.NET effectively based on the most important APIs and programming techniques. For anyone tackling ASP.NET, this book is a great source of practical advice backed up with real examples.

A standout feature of this text is that it does not try to take on all of .NET first before showing you how to start actually using ASP.NET. In the first chapters, you'll learn the most important APIs and programming techniques for using collections, files, and directories, uploading files, and the like. Anchored with VB.NET (and some C# examples), each chapter is written by a separate author (or authors) with a personal take and advice on topics like database programming with ADO.NET, XML, and security options. This is a truly winning approach because it will let beginners or those with experience with the older ASP standard get going quickly with ASP.NET. Better yet, the authors have tested their techniques with the current beta in real code, so you can trust what they say regarding performance, deployment, and configuration, for example.

Final chapters on such advanced topics as separating data from presentation logic, mobile controls for wireless devices, and COM/Win32 interoperability with .NET will please more expert readers. By carving out areas of ASP.NET and exploring them in depth rather than insisting on broad coverage for its own sake, as with many of the first round of titles on .NET, this title sets an admirably high standard as a practical source of programming advice on a platform that is still under construction.

Read this text with or without a general tutorial for .NET and VB.NET and you will have a great head start on Microsoft's newest Web development tools and languages.

Book Info: Tutorial framework for each chapter includes: a brief introduction, explaining the concept, a code example, and a piece by piece explanation of the code. The code examples are based upon the ASP.NET Beta2 specifications.

From the Back Cover: With a foreword by Microsoft's Mark Anders, Professional ASP.NET consists of 19 chapters written by seven of today's leading experts in ASP.NET. These authors are professional developers who create ASP.NET applications, teach, run well-known ASP.NET Web sites, either within or outside of Microsoft. The tutorial framework for each chapter includes:
• A brief introduction, explaining the concept.
• A code example, illustrating the concept.
• A piece-by-piece explanation of the code.

Most examples employ VB.NET, but there are also additional C# examples within each chapter, and all of the example programs will be available at the book's web site in both VB.NET and C#.

The code examples in this book are based upon the ASP.NET Beta2 specifications, a functionally complete version of the software.

About the Author: Lead author Scott Mitchell is the editor and founder of 4GuysFromRolla, one of the largest ASP resource sites on the Web. He has been avidly using and writing about Active Server Pages since January 1998: he's written several hundred ASP-related articles on 4Guys along with authoring numerous beginner-level and advanced level books on Active Server Pages. He is the author of two well-regarded and widely read books on Active Server Pages: Teach Yourself Active Server Pages 3.0 in 21 Days and Designing Active Server Pages. Scott is a passionate developer whose love for ASP and desire to help others are well known among the ASP community.

Stephen Walther is a cofounder of Superexpert. Superexpert offers ASP.NET training to companies and individuals (see AspWorkshops), produces ASP.NET controls (see SuperexpertControls), and offers a community Web site on ASP.NET and other Microsoft Technologies (see Superexpert). He is also very involved with the Seattle ASP.NET Users Group (see AspUsers). He is the author of three books on Active Server Pages: ASP.NET Unleashed, Active Server Pages Unleashed, and Teach Yourself E-Commerce with ASP in 21 Days.

Doug Seven, born and raised in Seattle, WA, is one of the co-founders of the .NET training company, DotNetJunkies. Doug comes to DotNetJunkies by way of technical roles at Nordstrom, Microsoft and GiftCertificates, and as a Training Specialist at Seattle Coffee Company. As the son of a programmer, Doug was destined to become a developer. Growing up around computers, his career began at the tender age of 11 writing "Choose Your Own Adventure" games in BASIC on a TRS-80, (unfortunately none of his groundbreaking work from this period survived). His first professional IT job was as a lead for the long-term data storage and disaster recovery group in a dual-IBM Mainframe environment at Nordstrom. After a seven-year sojourn as a rock star (seriously!), Doug took on the role of Technical Lead in Microsoft's Developer Support group. After leaving Microsoft, Doug worked as a developer in digital certificate enablement technology for GiftCertificates before leaving to pursue life running his own company. DotNetJunkies provides hands-on training in ASP.NET and ADO.NET data access.

Donny Mack, native of Washington State is one of the co-founders of DotNetJunkies, the training company solely dedicated to ASP.NET and ADO.NET. DotNetJunkies is also a free online centralized resource website used by .NET developers to feed their .NET passion. Prior to founding DotNetJunkies with Doug Seven, Mack worked at Microsoft Corporation as a Visual InterDev/ASP Support Professional. Mack's need for bleeding edge technology is such that he spends his waking hours, (and some of his non-waking hours), writing code and developing content for DotNetJunkies. Mack's real enjoyment comes from watching attendants of DotNetJunkies's training courses walk away as obsessed as he is with .NET.

Chris Payne has had a passion for computers and writing since a young age. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering from Boston University and supported himself through college as an independent consultant and writer of technical articles, focused on Web development. Currently making his home in Orlando, Florida with his fiancée, he works as a Web developer and is continuing his career as an author, both of technical and fictional material.

Billy Anders is a technologist whose zest for the dynamic can be seen in his contributions, as a Senior Consultant in the Advanced Technology Group of Microsoft Consulting Services in Redmond, WA. Over the past several years, Billy has focused on applications based on Microsoft technologies for both retail industry and enterprise customers. Billy is committed to teaching, as well as learning exciting, innovative web application programming technologies. While this is his first book project, he has lectured and written numerous articles on a variety of subjects including IIS, SQL Server, ASP and ASP.NET. When not exercising his mind, he exercises his spirit by motorcycling, snowboarding, and countless hours in the gym.

Adam Nathan is a Software Design Engineer on the Microsoft .NET Developer Platform QA team. Adam's focus is the Common Language Runtime-the core of the .NET platform--and its interoperability with COM. For the past two years, he has witnessed and influenced the design decisions that have shaped the product, and thus is able to give a unique perspective when explaining this technology to the reader. Adam has seen the areas of .NET with which programmers frequently struggle, and is armed with plenty of tips and tricks to share.

Dan Wahlin is an independent consultant for Wahlin Consulting and also founded XML for ASP.NET Developers (XMLforASP.NET) which focuses on using XML and Web Services in Microsoft's .NET platform. He also works as a corporate trainer for Global Knowledge. Previously, Dan worked as an enterprise Web site manager, director of Internet/wireless development, and as senior consultant for a global systems integrator. Dan enjoys writing technical articles on XML-related topics for Visual Studio Magazine, ASPToday, and is a regular columnist in XML Magazine. Dan co-authored Professional Windows DNA (Wrox Press) and authored XML for ASP.NET Developers (Sams).

Customer Reviews
Somewhat disappointing. No info about the .NET OO-concept., September 28, 2001
Reviewer: dion_olsthoorn from Leiden Netherlands
As an ASP professional I found this book somewhat disappointing. A lot of examples and tutorials in this book are too simple for advanced developers and stops when it gets interesting.

I my opinion the authors should have explained more about the .NET concepts, and how it is used in ASP.NET. Things like inheritance are just shortly mentioned in this book, without showing how to use this to your benefit. For example: somewhere in the first chapters, there is a code-example about a queue that stores all pages that the user has visited. The author advises to embed this code in a user-control, so you can include it on every page. Better would have been to show the reader how to create your own page-object by inheriting System.Web.UI.Page, and override the Page_Load method to include the visited-pages code.

Whenever things get too complicated (like explaining the syntax of Regular Expressions), the book only shows some most commonly-used examples, and gives a list of further readings. I think in most cases a short list and explanation of the syntax or methods would have helped a great deal.

However, I think this book is a good start for intermediate ASP developers who are currently building all their code in just VBScript (so no COM/MTS), and want to know what's new for them in ASP.NET.

I also liked the chapter about XML and ASP.NET. If you're interested about the XML support in ASP.NET, you should buy "XML for ASP.NET developers". It contains a good explanation about XML and how to use it in ASP.NET

If you're a professional ASP developer who is currently also using COM/MTS, and you're looking for a complete book about ASP.NET, I'd advise you "Professional ASP.NET" (Wrox). This book covers everything about ASP.NET and explains how it is an integrated part of the .NET runtime. Also, most examples in that book are both in VB.NET and C#.

The book really stands for the title, December 17, 2001
Reviewer: Alejandro G. Jack from Olivos, Buenos Aires Argentina
The book really stands for the title. I found in the book what I was looking for, something to get me started in ASP.NET without it beeing a begginers guide for novice programers. It takes you through every aspect of ASP.NET wich makes some chapters more interesting than others (ADO.NET, XML, Mobile Devices, etc..) almost all the chapters leave you greedy for more (specially passport authentication, webservices, managing state with SQL-Server) but the book is already 837 pages. This is the first time I see ASP.NET covered in every important aspect (web controls, caching and I never saw passport for example).

A mistake was made, by giving the framework sdk in the cd instead of the sample code, wich you can find in a million zip files in the web. They also failed in telling the sample code is intended to follow your progress in the book. That means you won't see quality code untill chapter 16 (separating code form presentation). I think they made a good desicion, so if your looking for a source of sample code this is the wrong place (Go to the web). I don't think this will become a reference book for me. As soon as you become proficient in the platform the book becomes shallow but this is the first time i'm happy with a book since i bought "Hitchhiker's guide to visual basic and SQL". This book succeds in having all the Tips, Tutorials and Code you need to get serious into ASP.NET today!!!!!!!!!!!!!.

Pretty poor book, May 14, 2002
Reviewer: A reader from Minneapolis, MN USA
This is a pretty poor book! I have been doing ASP development for 5 years and I found this book pretty useless. They have alot of code examples, but don't really tell you how to put them together into a project. This would definitely not be a good choice for someone new to ASP development.

This book is a definate must !!!, February 25, 2002
Reviewer: Tony Harding from Norwich, Norfolk United Kingdom
I found this book to be REALLY REALLLLY EXCELLENT !!! It covers absolutely EVERYTHING from Webservices to indepth ADO.net !! As a "Classic ASP" developer, I could really relate to the examples in the beginning of the book, where comparisons are made between how "Classic ASP" does it, and then how ASP.net does it. This book is REALLY REALLY good !

It has TONS of examples and source on (just to name a few) reading and writing to the event log, reading/writing to the filesystem, e-mailing, performance monitering, Creating user controls, Validator controls and how to use them properly, Do's and don'ts.... database connectivity, using datasets correctly, binding to the DataGrid and other controls... MAN OH MAN... the list goes on and on !!! This BOOK is a DEFINATE must for any person who wishes to become a competent ASP.net developer !!! There is SOOO much to learn about this topic and this book does an EXCELLLENT JOB !!!! OH YEAH !!!!!

... Using Mobile Software Simulaters... XML, using the Output Cache, managine session state, configuring application settings, web.config stuff....

So like I was saying... if you're SERIOUS about learning ASP.net, then take a look at the title of the book and think about it : "Tips" "Tutorials" and "CODE !"

TIPS TUTORIALS CODE

Say these 3 words again.... and then think about it... ?

Sounds nice doesn't it !!!

But Seriously... this book is ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT !!! Its set out in a REALLY excellent professional manner, and makes learning ASP.net seem like a breeze !!!

Knowledge is Power... and this book is SERIOUS knowledge !

Hope I've been able to help you decide if this book is for you ! I know it's GREAT for me !!

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