 | Programming ASP.NET by Jesse Liberty/Dan Hurwitz is designed to provide you with an indepth look at ASP.NET through the eyes of a C# or VB.NET developer. This dual purpose authoring style is a growing trend in ASP.NET books and it is one that I don't care for. |
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| There is a lot of hype around the ability to write .NET oriented code in multiple languages. In reality, the need or desire for a developer to write in multiple languages in ASP.NET will be rare. Thus, negating the benefit of writing books that show tidbits of both languages when providing code examples. It clouds the overall tutorial with information that is often not relevant to what the reader is trying to digest. Learning how to implement one .NET language with ASP.NET is hard enough. Learning two is downright painful. That being said, there is quite a bit of good information contained in Programming ASP.NET even if you do have to weed out items you aren't interested in. Here are a few of my favorites: |
| Debugging: The authors do a solid job of teaching the reader how to utilize the IDE's tracing and debugging features. They walk you through the whole process step by step providing you with some great screen shots and IDE debug reference charts. This is not the best chapter I've ever seen on utilizing the IDE's debugging features but it is better than most books and certainly sufficient for most developers. |
| ADO.NET: Many ASP.NET books fall short with this crucial subject. Programming ASP.NET covers all the expected areas such as SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, and Stored Procedures. Plus it focuses specifically on the DataSet object and everything it can do from dynamically constructing data sets to utilizing stored procedures to update data with or without transactions. There is a ton of sample code for syntax training in these chapters. |
| Managing State: One of the more challenging aspects of normal ASP is managing state. In ASP.NET, you are able to manage state without Session variables. There is a nice section on this topic that covers View State and the State Bag. I'd suggest reviewing this in chapter 6 before writing your first full web site in ASP.NET. |
| Object Caching: This is probably one of the most beneficial chapters in the book. I got a lot out of learning how to cache pages and actual objects such as datasets. The code examples and explainations thereof were just what I needed. I fully expect this to play a key role in future .NET sites I'll be working on. |
| Security: Number #1 topic of the day these days. Programming ASP.NET dedicates a pleasantly surprising amount of coverage to this topic. You'll learn various levels of windows authentication and how to make the most of them in .NET. You'll also pick up a few tips on configuring IIS and the web.config file. |
| All in all, Programming ASP.NET was a good read aside from the lack of coverage on XML and the language combination comments I mentioned above. If you enjoy O'Reilly books and the style they are written in, you'll definitely enjoy this one. However, if you are a beginner with ASP.NET, don't let the combination of C# and VB.NET code throw you off track. If you stay focused on the aspects of ASP.NET, this book can help you out a great deal. |
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| Table Of Contents |
| Sample Chapter - Custom and User Controls |