Beginning ASP.NET Using C#

by Rob Birdwell, Ollie Cornes, Chris Goode, Ajoy Krishnamoorthy, Juan T. Llibre, Christopher L. Miller, Neil Raybould, David Sussman, Chris Ullman

Paperback: 1000 pages
Publisher: Wrox Press Inc
ISBN: 1861006152; 1st edition (November 15, 2001)

ASP.NET is the latest incarnation of Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASP) - a powerful server-based technology, designed to create dynamic and interactive HTML pages for your Web site, or corporate intranet. ASP.NET also constitutes a core element in Microsoft's .NET vision, providing web-based access to an immensely powerful new development environment, .NET; in this respect alone, it's a great leap ahead of all previous versions of ASP.

This book will provide you with a step-by-step introduction to ASP.NET using C#, with plenty of worked examples that will help you to gain a deep understanding of what ASP.NET is all about, and how you can harness it to build powerful web applications.

Wrox has published two editions of Beginning ASP.NET, one presenting code samples in C#, the other in VB.NET, with sample downloads available in both languages.

This book covers:
• Creating basic ASP.NET pages
• Learning the basics of C#
• Understanding the concepts of Object Oriented Programming
• Working with Data and XML
• The ASP.NET Server Controls
• Creating User Controls and Components
• Exploring the world of Web Services
• Configuring your ASP.NET Applications
• The future of VoiceXML technologies, including VoiceXML 2.0

From the Publisher: This book is aimed at relatively inexperienced web builders who are looking to enrich their sites with dynamically-generated content, and want to learn how to start building web applications using ASP.NET. Developers who have a little experience with previous versions of ASP (and are looking to move over to ASP.NET), may also find this book helpful in getting a simple grasp on what ASP.NET is, what it does, and how it can be used.

Experience of basic HTML is required, but previous experience of ASP is not essential. We'll be teaching the basics of C# in this book, so prior experience of C# is not required.

About the Author: Rob Birdwell works at Hewlett-Packard. His current interests include all facets of .NET technology and especially the C# language.

In 1999 Ollie Cornes co-founded a business-to-business Internet company and until recently was their Chief Technical Officer. Prior to that his various roles involved programming, technical authoring, network management, writing, leading development projects and consulting. He has worked with Demon Internet, Microsoft, Saab, Travelstore and Vodafone.

Chris Goode is a Technical Architect in the .NET team at Wrox, currently specializing in ASP.NET. She has a degree in Mechanical Engineering, but decided that the engineering world wasn't for her. She's now back firmly in the world of computers, finding that life at Wrox combines the fun stuff with the work stuff pretty well...

Customer Reviews
Should have been titled Intro to programming using C#, January 8, 2002
Reviewer: A reader from Fremont, CA USA
I purchased this book because I was looking for a leg up with creating data driven web pages with C#. (I found the C# books light on the ASP side.)

This book clearly has some value about ASP.Net using C#, but it should really have been titled Introduction to programming using ASP.Net and C#.

The author spends way too much time educating the reader about topics like how to declare a variable and that SQL means structured query language, and to retrieve data you use the SELECT command. There is actually a whole chapter on what a variable is, and how you declare them. (boring). The first 4 chapters are pretty much useless to anyone but a person learning how to program for the first time.

That said, there are some valuable topics, and I did get something from the book. There is a pretty good review of Static Class Members and Class relationships. (for those of you moving to Object Oriented programming). Chapters 12 - 17 are really the meat of this book. Covering Database Driven web sites, Server Controls (very valuable), Component building and Debugging/Error Handling.

Perfect for absolute beginners, February 4, 2002
Reviewer: Graham Dobson from Canada
This book assumes you know nothing at all about C# or ASP.NET and it does take a long time to evolve. I would say it takes about 600 pages to get to a level that one would consider to be real world practices in regard to ASP.NET programming with C#. But this book is not insulting for all of that. It offers a nice slow moving tutorial on C# and manages to introduce the many varieties of data access available with ADO.NET, while also serving up a useful introduction to ASP.NET server controls and .NET coding techniques and design practices. By the end of this book you will certainly have a good grounding for further exploration. Also, absolutely every one of the examples in this book works! Despite what some of the rather limited and obviously inept reviewers below claim.

Not Sure How to Critique This Book Fairly, April 25, 2002
Reviewer: James Norman from Phoenix, AZ United States
I have not seen a book yet that addresses a large target audience that is missing for ASP.NET books -- and that is people like me who were ASP/VB/VBScript programmers moving to C#, who do know something about ASP and (separately) event-driven programming.

As such, I think it would be great if there were a book that said "Here's how you used to do things" and "Here's how you do them now" and why, and then focused on the newer concepts in ASP.NET (such as object orientation, something simulated in VB but not in ASP.)

My big problem with THIS book, is how the chapters are ordered and written. Chapter 1, how to set up ASP.NET, is indeed a good start and is something more books should contain. I tried to read this book in chapter order, and I think that was a mistake. For someone else with a similar background, I would suggest the following order:

(Basic overview of what's new)
Chapter 1 - skim, Chapter 2, Chapter 3 - skim, Chapter 14

(If not familiar with C++, or better yet, get a full-on C# book), Chapter 6, Chapter 4

(events), Chapter 7

(Database), Chapter 12, Chapter 13, Chapter 5

(Debugging), Chapter 17

(Your own objects -- even classic ASP programmers know how to USE objects, so I'm not so sure some of the earlier material is terribly necessary), Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11

(As needed), Chapters 15, 16, 18, 19

Too many mistakes misguided explanations., March 29, 2002
Reviewer: Dan Cramer from San Diego, CA USA
WROX pushed this out way to fast. They didn't even bother to run it through a spell checker, much less try to run the example code. Mistakes like, "It's spellt..." and "..you can miss it out.." just are unforgivable from a major publisher. Don't they have proofreaders?

Then, there are the technical mistakes. A lot of the examples won't run without modification. And, beginning programmers (who the book is supposedly aimed at) wouldn't be able to fix the errors. Also, many of the examples are poor attempts to convey a concept. The authors talk often about a topic, then show an example that almost shows counterpoint to what they said.

Next flaw... The book is not "Beginning ASP Using C#". It's "Beginning C# Using ASP." Crucial ASP topics are left undiscussed. Like the difference between Page_Load and Page_Init. They point out an 'anomaly' in one example concerning the two methods, but don't explain that it's not an anomaly at all! There's a very good reason behind it, and the explanation is not terribly difficult.

Finally, the books explanation of fundamental OOP concepts is so confused and misguided that it makes me wonder if the authors have more than a passing familiarity with the topic. My guess is that they are former VB/ASP programmers who haven't ever had any experience in a real OO language. They don't seem to grasp the key concepts behind Inheritance, Polymorphism and Encapsulation and the certainly don't have a clue how to explain them. Forget more subtle concepts, such as the difference between strong and weak aggregation.

As one reader pointed out, this is the only book, currently, on the market doing ASP with a pure C# emphasis. But, it just has too many flaws. Steer clear.

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