Professional Active Server Pages 3.0

by Alex Homer, David Sussman, Brian Francis, George Reilly, Esposito, Dino Esposito, Andrea Chiarelli, Craig McQueen, Godfrey Nolan, Simon Robinson, John Schenken, Kent Tegel

Paperback: 1277 pages
Publisher: Wrox Press Inc
ISBN: 1861002610; 1st edition (September 1999)

The team behind Professional Active Server Pages 2.0 has written a definitive guide for the latest version of ASP included with Windows 2000. This lengthy text offers a comprehensive look at the technology and is geared toward seasoned professionals looking to truly master this important development platform. The team of authors touch on almost every topic a working ASP coder might be interested in, including what to do when "it all goes wrong."

This title is divided into six sections that focus on key aspects of ASP: the basics, ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), building components for ASP, integration with BackOffice, security/performance/scalability, and reference material. This organization makes the book useful for both lengthy reads and quick daily reference. The index and set of appendices are also quite comprehensive.

Code snippets of judicious size and summary boxes with key information such as errors and function calls make the reading productive without being distracting. Most of the material is presented in a structured topical tutorial; however, an excellent XML newspaper case study provides a real-world perspective on XML and ASP.

While a number of working programmers authored this guide, the group's expertise has been well-integrated to read consistently. The team provides some error-preventing programming procedures such as formatting and indenting code, being "Explicit" about declarations, converting variables to the appropriate data types, using good variable naming conventions, encapsulating script, and more. Whether you're looking for information on utilizing components, implementing certificates, or working with Active Directory, you'll find answers in this fine work.

Topics covered: ASP basics and versions, Active Server Components, ADO, XML data, components, COM/COM+, ASP Script Components, C++ component issues, ADSI and Active Directory, Message Queue Server, Collaboration Data Objects, Exchange Server integration, certificates, performance optimization, site load balancing, and ASP Object Model.

Book Description: This book is about Active Server Pages 3.0, as included with Windows 2000. However, because ASP is now a core part of so many Web-oriented features within Windows, this book covers a far wider area than just how ASP works. ASP is maturing all the time to encompass more integration with other Windows services and software, and so there are many other areas that impinge directly on the use and performance of ASP.

In particular this involves the Windows operating system itself, including the new security features of Windows 2000, and the Internet server software that comes with Windows 2000 - Internet Information Server (IIS). On top of this are the other less obvious services, which also have a direct or indirect effect on the way that ASP works. These include COM+, the various Internet service administration tools, and (indirectly) the many other services and installed software packages that either provide additional functionality to ASP, or which have interfaces that are available for use in ASP.

So, as well as chapters all about the roots of ASP, the base object structure, and how it's used, you'll also see chapters that demonstrate the many different ways that ASP integrates seamlessly with other software and services in Windows. One of the most obvious of these is access to data in a relational database or other type of data store (such as Active Directory), and you'll see several chapters devoted to these topics.

We'll also explore the intimate relationship between Internet Information Server and COM and the new COM+, and see how ASP has changed the way that it hosts and executes external components to provide better performance and scalability. This also affects the way that components are designed and built, and we'll be exploring this topic in some depth as well.

From the Publisher: This book has been selected by the editors of Wrox Press to be part of the Wroxbase website.

Professional Active Server Pages 3.0 is the next edition of the number one selling ASP book in the world; Professional Active Server Pages 2.0. This is a next edition covering all the new features that appear as part of Win2000 but it is also a completely new book in terms of content, recycling essentially nothing from the previous edition. Instead all the concepts are taken a step further for a more mature audience and ASP is considered in terms of an N-tier enterprise environment including extensive coverage of components, Index Server, ADO 2.5, XML, CDO, ADSI, and much more.

Wrox provides community and email support for all its titles. Discuss your ASP 3 problems with other readers on p2p.wrox.com. Get direct email support from support@wrox.com - support on this is provided by a Wrox editor and the book's authors.

About the Author: Brian is a Senior Developer with NCR's Human Interface Technology Center in Atlanta, Georgia. At the HITC, Brian is responsible for prototyping and developing advanced applications that apply superior human interfaces as developed at the Center. His tools of choice include Visual Basic, Visual C++, Java, and all of the Microsoft Internet products. Brian has developed and deployed Multimedia Kiosk applications, Computer-based Training applications, and other advanced user interface prototypes for the past three years. He is also a regular Wrox author who contributed to Professional Active Server Pages 2.0.

Customer Reviews
Not for Beginners, January 3, 2001
Reviewer: Brooks Williams from St. Louis, MO
This book is called *Professional* Active Server Pages -- and rightfully so. Believing that I was on the Professional level, I purchased this book and read most of it before placing it on my desk at work for reference. Every once and a while I picked up this book with a specific ASP question in my head and tried to find the answer within its pages. This was a mistake.

If you're looking for a reference book, check out *Beginning* Active Server Pages -- also by Wrox press. Otherwise this book is great. The sections on ADO and XML are well written as well as the performance tuning sections. There is information on these pages that I haven't found elsewhere and for that reason alone, this is a great book to read. My only complaint is that there seems to be a lack of good examples. The text does contain some examples, but sometimes the concepts can overcome the reader and there needs to be a bit more clarification. More pictures, code examples and general explaining would have been very helpful. Overall, I've been very happy with this book. Wrox Press has been turning out some great books with the Web Applications Developer in mind and I hope they keep up the good work.

For inter./adv. web developers using Microsoft, September 24, 2001
Reviewer: Shannon Ma from Orlando, FL USA
Professional Active Server Pages 3.0, by Alex Homer, is a book on developing web applications using Active Server Pages 3.0. This book goes in depth into developing web applications with discussions and examples on advanced topics such as, CDO/Microsoft Exchange Server, ADO/Microsoft SQL Server, and ADSI/Active Directory. Homer presents the reader with a wealth of information on advanced enterprise level topics based on Microsoft technologies. This book is excellent for intermediate/advanced users who wish to learn about Active Server Pages using Microsoft technologies, however due to the fact Homer does not goes in depth with fundamentals of programming Visual Basic Script, this book should not be recommended to novice developers.

Throughout the book, Homer discusses the importance of COM/COM+ and what that technology can do for your web application. He writes examples of a COM+ component in Visual Basic and shows the user how to register/load the component into memory along with utilizing the functionality of them in an Active Server Page. Homer further explores the features of Windows 2000 by introducing the features of Active Directory and explaining/demonstrating how ADSI can connect an Active Server Page to the Active Directory. The book goes into further detail on enterprise level topics by discussing how CDO interfaces with Microsoft Exchange Server. Using CDO, a developer can access all of users Exchange account information including mail, contacts, calendar, etc. The book ends with performance and security issues for web applications running on a Windows 2000 Server and how an administrator should configure a Windows 2000 Server for maximum performance and security.

The software/technologies the book uses are based on products/technologies developed by Microsoft. Since Active Server Pages is a Microsoft technology, it would be reasonable to use only Microsoft products/technologies. However, in the real world, many businesses have heterogeneous environments with Oracle database servers and JavaScript web developers. The fact that this book only exposes the reader to vendor-specific technologies could be a down fall, however creates a centralized focus for the reader.

This book covers a wide spectrum of advanced knowledge with Active Server Pages, however is completely based around Microsoft technologies. Several other authors composed this book, which helps the reader get a dynamic flavor of knowledge from chapter to chapter as one can see. Any intermediate/advanced web developer, interested in enterprise web application development, should purchase a copy of this book for reference purposes.

All you need to know on ASP, April 9, 2002
Reviewer: A reader
To make a long story short: I am working for nearly two years now with ASP and the only book I ever needed is this , It has everything! If you'll buy one ASP book make sure it's this one.

Lots of Material, but Very Weak ADO Coverage, February 18, 2002
Reviewer: Victor A. Reinhart from La Palma, CA USA
This book might be OK if you want an encyclopedia of information. But the ADO chapters are very weak. And, for me, ADO is what I need to know the most. As for debugging, I guess you can cover debugging ASP in just 4 pages. After all, ASP has virtually no debugging capability at all. You can't even set the next statement. And, looking at variables in the immediate window leaves a great deal to be desired. Even so, this book's coverage of debugging was lacking. I guess that's OK if you never plan to have any bugs.

Does anyone really care about integrating with Active Directory? Or, writing C++ components? Or 10 other obscure topics? If so, this book is for you. If instead, you want to build a database application using VBScript, I suggest you use another book. I think I wasted my money. Of the entire book, I can use maybe 30 pages.

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