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When I first read Professional ASP.NET,
it was in its first edtion which covered BETA 2. My personal copy
of this original edition is now so incredibly dog-eared and marked
up with notes and yellow highlighter sections that the arrival of
the review copy of the new edition for the RTM release may have
been a blessing in disguise. If you are already an owner of the
original edition then you know what I am talking about. I have literally
"devoured" this book, and if the new edition hadn't come
out, I would likely still be "devouring" it for the next
year. This book is like "chocolate mousse cake for the mind".
Besides "Professional C#", which is another near - 1300
page Wrox title, I would have to say Professional ASP.NET
could well be the most useful book I ever forked over $60 bucks
for.
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Professional ASP.NET 1.0, Special Edition has been completely
rewritten to cover Visual Studio.NET RTM. The code samples are now
divided into two versions, one download for all the code in C# and
a separate one for all the code written in VB.NET. This is a major
improvement over the original edition, where the code was intermixed
and most of the samples were in VB.NET (although that was good for
me because it gave me plenty of practice translating VB.NET to C#).
This book is not really for the very beginning developer, although
if you are one, you could certainly make a good stab at it.
If you are serious about getting into the .NET platform and really understanding
how ASP.NET works, this book is for you. The thing I like the most about
many Wrox titles is their ability to assemble a cadre of professional
developer / writers, usually from 4 to 8 or more authors, and split up
the task of writing a title into one or more chapters per author. The
advantage to the reader is that we get a book that's (when it's done right)
really several books in one. You may have some chapters written on a more
introductory level, and others that are very advanced. Yet, they preserve
the flow from chapter - to - chapter and author - to - author in a professional
way that seems logical and well - planned. Just to give you a glimpse
of what you can expect from this invaluable title, I've dissected the
table of contents with my personal comments about each chapter below:
-
Introduction - describes the
overall focus of the book , the target audience, and other materials.
-
Chapter 1: A Fast Track Guide to
ASP.NET - an overview of the concepts of ASP.NET - how it originated
and was developed, installation, samples, web forms, codebehind, etc.
-
Chapter 2: Understanding the .NET
Framework -Overview of the CLR and Common Type System and the
design goals of the ASP.NET architecture.
-
Chapter 3: The .NET Languages -
Object - oriented language architecture, classes, interfaces,
inheritance, etc.
-
Chapter 4: Writing ASP.NET Pages
- Construction of ASP.NET pages and how the event model works.
-
Chapter 5: Server Controls and
Validation - the intrinsic ASP.NET server and HTML controls
-
Chapter 6: ASP.NET Web Form Controls
-WebForm controls and how they are used
-
Chapter 7: List Controls and Data
Binding - about the most complete treatise you'll ever find on
Data Binding in .NET
-
Chapter 8: Introducing .NET Data
Management - Data Stores, XML, managed code, namespaces, comparisons
to ADO
-
Chapter 9: Working with Relational
Data - Use of DataReader, DataSet, DataTable, DataView, editing,
events, etc.
-
Chapter 10: Updating Relational
Data Sources - DataAdapter, Object chain, stored procedures, DataSet
/ XML, and more.
-
Chapter 11: XML Data Management
in .NET - XMLDataDocuments, displaying, reading, validating, schemas,
transforms
-
Chapter 12: Web Applications and
global.asax - divided into IIS Web Roots/Applications, ASP.NET
Applications, State management (Application, Session and Cache), Application
Events, and advanced topics such as asynchronous events and static
variables.
-
Chapter 13: Configuration -
complete overview of machine.config and web.config XML configuration
files, including debug and trace
-
Chapter 14: Securing ASP.NET Applications
- security and authentication from IIS right on up through ASP.NET
in all aspects
-
Chapter 15: Working with Collections
and Lists - ICollection and IList interfaces, arrays and IComparer,
indexers, dictionaries, hashtable, Stack class, Queue and SortedList
Classes. Custom Types and enumerators.
-
Chapter 16: Working with Other
Base Classes - Directories and Files, reading - writing, paths,
TextReader / writer, MemoryStream, encoding, HTTPWebRequest / Response,
Regex, etc.
-
Chapter 17: .NET Components - Everything
about writing Business Objects - properties, methods, attributes,
inheritance, Serviced Components, COM+, versioning, side-by-side execution
and more.
-
Chapter 18: Building ASP.NET Server
Controls - about the best in-depth explanation of custom controls
you will find anywhere, in any book.
-
Chapter 19: Exposing Web Services
- includes Data Caching, controlling the XML, async, intrinsic
SOAP classes.
-
Chapter 20: Using Web Services
- proxies, UDDI, interoperability, WSDL, exceptions, security,
authentication, the works!
-
Chapter 21: Mobile Controls -Mobile
Internet Toolkit and controls, in - depth.
-
Chapter 22: Tracing, Error Handling,
Debugging, and Performance - reasonably complete coverage of ASP.NET
debugging, tracing and error-handling techniques, includes Profiling
and performance metrics
-
Chapter 23: Migration and Interoperability
- ASP -> ASP.NET, JScript / VBScript to .NET counterparts,
using COM from .NET, .NET from COM, intrinsic objects.
-
Chapter 24: Case Study - IBuyAdventure.NET
- covers the custom sample enterprise application for this book
-
Appendix A: The Common System Namespaces
- basics on the common namespaces in .NET
-
Appendix B: Scott Guthrie's Top
Performance Tips - if you've ever been to a PDC or Tech-Ed, this
is Scott's presentation.
-
Appendix C: Reference and Further
Information - Listings of ASP.NET web sites, third party component
vendors, and hosting companies
-
Index
In short, this book is a comprehensive,
well-written, in-depth and practical roadmap to proficiency in ASP.NET.
About the only subject that's not covered in this book is Remoting, and
the case could be made that's not really "ASP.NET". Other Wrox
titles, however, do cover it. Professional ASP.NET 1.0 Special Edition
is a big book. You can be assured of high returns on your investment for
a long time to come. Highly recommended!
Peter Bromberg is an independent consultant specializing in distributed .NET solutions
in Orlando and a co-developer of the EggheadCafe.com
developer website. He can be reached at pbromberg@yahoo.com
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