Debugging ASP.NET

by Jonathan Goodyear, Brian Peek, Brad Fox

Paperback: 350 pages
Publisher: New Riders Publishing
ISBN: 0735711410; 1st edition (October 2001)

The typical web or software developer spends over 50% of his or her time debugging code, yet most development books spend little (if any) time on the subject. Debugging ASP.NET concentrates on debugging issues related to Microsoft’s new web development platform, ASP.NET. All of the new debugging tools introduced in ASP.NET are covered, and solutions are offered to many of the confusing error messages, pitfalls, and “gotchas” that developers will no doubt encounter while moving to this powerful new platform. Debugging ASP.NET is poised to become the de facto standard in ASP.NET debugging. Each debugging feature is closely examined, with full descriptions and related, useful code. This is the first book on ASP.NET that assumes things can (and will) go wrong, providing expert tips and solutions.

About the Author: Jonathan Goodyear began his career as a software developer at Arthur Andersen after receiving a degree in accounting and information technology from Stetson University. He has also worked as a consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers and as the Internet architect for the Home Shopping Network's e-commerce presence (hsn). Presently, he works as an independent consultant through his consulting practice, ASPSoft, focusing on developing web applications with ASP.NET.

Jonathan is a contributing editor for Visual Studio Magazine (vbpj) and is a charter member of the Visual Studio 6 MCSD certification. He is also the founder and editor of angryCoder (angrycoder), the first eZine written completely in ASP.NET. When not hunched over a keyboard, Jonathan likes to spend time going to theme parks with his family near his home in Orlando, Florida.

Brian Peek is a senior software developer with Rapid Application Developers, Inc. (rapiddevelopers/) located in Troy, New York. He specializes in developing n-tiered applications, web-based applications, wireless applications, and any other projects that happen to come along. Additionally, he is the owner and lead programmer of Ganksoft Entertainment (ganksoft/), a small video gamedevelopment company dedicated to producing high-quality games for video game consoles using only freely available tools and documentation. He holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from Union College in Schenectady, New York, his hometown. When not coding for work or coding games that he wishes would be published commercially, he can often be found practicing magic, learning to play piano, or playing his latest favorite video game. He can be reached at brian@ganksoft.com or brian@rapiddevelopers.com.

Brad Fox started programming in BASIC at the age of 12. Since then, computers and technology have played an integral part in his life. Brad joined the Army right out of high school and served in the 82nd Airborne Division. Since then he has gone on to become a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer. Currently, Brad is CEO of Digital Intelligence, Inc., where he spends most of his time developing cutting-edge technology for the financial industry.

Customer Reviews
Overall good book, April 29, 2002
Reviewer: A reader from AZ, USA
There are good chapter about Tracing, code structures, and ADO.net debugging, and lot more. A must have for .Net Web developers. Code examples are in both VB and C#. I wish Author have included more code for COM based debugging.

Decent focused book, January 30, 2002
Reviewer: Gregory A. Beamer
To a certain extent, I find this title a bit of a misnomer, as this particular tome contains more than simply debugging. It is well structured to relate these additional topics to debugging, but it is a pleasure to go through a book that both covers its subject and many of the peripheral issues that can help you debug, as well. While this book is not heavy on OO, which would make a nice additional topic, debugging OO or procedural is largely the same. There is a good mixture of both C# and VB.NET code, which I applaud. It is important to know that debugging is the same, regardless of language. I do have a slight beef with the amount of code that resides in the ASPX file. This comes from my belief that the separation of code and UI, via a CodeBehind file, is an important part of .NET. You may disagree with this assessment.

There are some good examples of using tracing in your applications. Tracing is a great tool to find where you are having problems. There is also a nice section on logging your application exceptions. The material on caching, although not completely related to debugging, is a nice addition. The book, overall, is aimed for more advanced readers. I think a beginner might be able to tackle some of the material, and probably should, but understand that you might get a bit lost if this is your first ASP.NET book.

Great Book, January 9, 2002
Reviewer: Steve Graddy from Cordova, Tennessee USA
I have spent thousands of dollars on books and classroom training to improve my programming skills. It is very rare that any book or any instructor will spend very much time on the debugging process of the language being taught. For me this leaves a lot of the beginning programmers short on their skills, since debugging is 50% of what you do all day. This book gives you a great start on learning the process of debugging an ASP.Net web application and helps you past some of the gotchas that you WILL fall into. If you are going to develop a ASP.Net web application, I highly endorse this book as required reading!

Awesome, November 27, 2001
Reviewer: Clint Tredway from Dallas Tx, USA
I am a professional web developer and I have spent thousands of dollars on books to stay up to date on my knowledge, and this book is bar far one of the best that I have read yet. This books goes into detail about the gotchas that most other books fail to mention. I highly recomend it!

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