Building Web Solutions with ASP .NET and ADO .NET

by Dino Esposito

Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: Microsoft Press
ISBN: 0735615780; Bk&Cd-Rom edition (February 13, 2002)

Most Web applications follow a simple "3F" pattern: fetch, format, and forward data to the browser. With this in-depth guide, developers can take their Web design and programming skills to the next level to build more complex Web pages, applications, and services. The book demonstrates the advanced data-access capabilities of ADO.NET and the powerful page-creation capabilities of ASP.NET, plus how to employ code reusability, pagelets, code-behind, server-side controls, and other time-saving techniques.

Customer Reviews
good stuff on ado.net, May 28, 2002
Reviewer: Tao yang from state college, PA United States
I should give 4 starts,but the author's English is too bad. Was this review helpful to you?

Good stuff, April 30, 2002
Reviewer: straightener from Dallas, TX United States
Finally a book that has examples that WORK!!!!!! Unlike a well known red-bound competitor, it seems that a little more QA was involved in this book. It reads well, has concrete examples, and is written in C#. It goes into excruciating detail on late and early binding of controls and the use of grids. If you're a web programmer who churns out reports that draw on data from SQL Server (like the majority of us poor slobs who work for a website rather than owning one), then this book will be quite helpful. Dot net is cool.

Not the Dolce Vita, April 27, 2002
Reviewer: Eddie Russell from Double Bay, Australia
With the exception of the incomparable Francesco Balena I sincerely believed that Dino Esposito's book would be no less worth of a meritorious award in the area of technical books. Moreover, in view of the fact that it preceded Balena's book, which is due out in May 2002, this was going to help me close the gap. It's no good trying to code in ASP.NET without having a clear understanding of VB.NET, and likewise, without having a good understanding of VB.NET, ASP.NET is limited.

Dino's book promised to fulfil that promise, albeit by supplying first-hand examples in C#, a language that I am sure will find a worthy induction in the Museum of Natural Languages along with Eiffel, Prolog, ADA, RPG, Forth, Samlltalk, and soon I soon am certain Java and Javascript. However, I decided to go ahead and purchase the book anyway in the full belief that by installing the CD, which is supplied with the book, I would find examples in the more relevant of languages, VB. Indeed there is a wonderfully organised CD with all the chapters covered. However, the content is poor.

So are the various examples and explanations peppered throughout the book. I will proceed to explain why is it that a book like Balena's (VB Programming) becomes a definitive classic in the world of VB programming - as I am certain VB.NET will become - and why a book like Dino's will be relegated to the specials shelf. For someone like me who codes 9-10 hours per day it is critical to have real-world examples to refer to. By real-world I mean thorny, complicated issues that crop up everyday. Not the rubbish that Que and Sams put out: how to paint flags or draw circles. That is Shayyet (as the Irish pronounce it). I need to re-program code that I have already written in VB and SQL Server in VB.NET and make it work for the web. By that I mean, tight, complex, and robust code.

The examples and theory that I would be looking for would cover issues of addressing every aspect of a datagrid for example. Granted Dino covers that, but from a databound standpoint only. Now any programmer that is worth his salt will be the first to tell that you don't ever code databound. You always code unbound. I need clear cut examples that cover this type of coding, whether code-behind or via a class, in VB.NET/ASP.NET. None to be found anywhere in Dino's book. What you do find is a lot of mental-wanking on ADO, bound data etc. etc. But this is all very nice, but it does address life in the trenches. So you write to Dino, and sure enough the man is a gentleman, and he is polite and prompt, but the answers come back with , "I haven't done that...", or "I haven't tested that...", or "I don't know that...". Well, why not ?

You have written a book, a high-level book, not a VB for Morons text, so where is the hard stuff that we are paying top dollar for. Frankly if I have to burn the midnight oil to find out the clues and figure out the complex coding issues, in other words, if I have to cover the hard yards, I don't need to pay Dino ...Australian Dollars for his book. The only reason I would pay that kind of money would be if Dino had already covered that ground for me.

Another example: in my original code I used a third-party ODBC driver. Do you think there is even a hint of how to utilise a third-party ODBC driver in Dino's book ? Certainly not ! And of course, if you ask Dino, he will tell you very politely, that "he hasn't done that". What he has done is written a thesis on ADO/ASP.NET that addresses theoretical issues that you are never likely to encounter in the real-world. So if you are going to be presenting a paper on the subject get Dino's book. However, if you are going to be in the trenches, fighting for your professional life, get Balena on your side. Otherwise you will be shot dead in the mud.

Great book on data binding and more, February 23, 2002
Reviewer: Gregory A. Beamer
If you have not read Dino's articles on ASP Today, or MSDN, you have missed quite a bit. Dino is really a great writer, especially when it comes to data and performance decisions. Who better to write a book on using ADO.NET with ASP.NET. The whole first third to half of the book deals with binding data to various controls, primarily the data grid. This is a good thing, as the dataGrid control is the one you will use for most of your data reporting. You learn to page, edit and use templates with this wonderful control. The downside here is that the rest of the controls are largely fluffed over in the first chapter. Overall, this is not a bad thing, but a little more content on the repeater (which is by far the most flexible) and the DataList (which is also editable) would have been a nice addition to this work.

In the middle of the book, you get into code reusability. The chapter loses focus at time, but deals with how you include different controls into your page, including custom user controls. From here, you learn about advanced data reporting, which may well be worth the price of the book alone. You head into deeper programatic decisions here. Fortunately, the DataGrid makes most of this a breeze. The final third of the book (part of section II and all of section III) puts wheels on what you have learned in the first 2/3rds. The chapters in this third deal with disconnected data, web services, interop with COM and exposing data to your ASP.NET applications. As I have stated, my largest beef with this book is the lack of more examples with the Repeater and DataList. Overall, I cannot be too critical here, as the DataGrid will most likely bare the brunt of your ASP.NET data programming work. It is a deep enough shortcoming to me, however, that I have to deduct 1 star.

A couple more comments:

1. This book is written using C#. If you are a VB.NET developer, you can still use the book for the concepts, but understand the syntax will be different.

2. This is not a beginner's book. While I can see programmer's experience with ADO utilizing this book, esp. if they come from a language that uses braces (Java, JavaScript, C++, etc.), I would not recommend this as a first .NET book for an inexperienced programmer.

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