Building Secure Microsoft ASP.NET Applications (Pro-Developer)

Paperback: 624 pages
Publisher: Microsoft Press; 1 edition (February 1, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0735618909
ISBN-13: 978-0735618909
Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.4 x 1.4 inches





This title presents a scenario-based approach to designing and building secure applications that are based on ASP.NET technology. It identifies exactly where and how developers should perform authentication and authorization, and it demonstrates both how and when to use security techniques in establishing communication within and across the tiers of distributed Microsoft .NET Web applications.

Above all, it imparts best practices for predictable results-based on proven techniques and insights gleaned from Microsoft product teams and the experience of Microsoft customers.


User Review:


However, this is overall a good book on the subject.

While MS may not seem like the best source for security information, this really is a good book. Unlike the person ranting in another review, I personally don't care whether Bill Gates and MS is good or evil, or whether the security initiative at MS is a hoax or an honest effort. I care if this book can help me create a better, more secure ASP.NET application. And in that is is a success.

4 stars rather than 5 because the book is a little dry, and not exactly a page turner. However, there are things in here (like the section on hashing passwords) that will really make a difference in the security of your application.


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Building Automated Trading Systems: With an Introduction to Visual C++.NET 2005

Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Academic Press (March 21, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0750682515
ISBN-13: 978-0750682510
Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 7.4 x 1 inches







"Building Automated Trading Systems is a must read for anyone developing professional algorithmic trading systems. It brings all aspects of design, functionality and real-time system implementation into clear step-by-step focus. This book will be a first choice reference manual for the serious professional .NET programmer in trading system development."
-- Russell Wojcik, Member of CME and CBOT, Head of Trading Strategy Concentration, Illinois Institute of Technology

"This book is an excellent primer for anyone interested in developing automated or semi-automated trading applications. Ben covers the programming knowledge needed to develop successful trading applications. A must have for traders getting into programming and programmers getting into trading. It will also serve as a useful reference for developing more sophisticated trading tools."
-- Sagy P. Mintz, Vice President, Trading Technologies, Inc.


User Review:

Book goes over .NET C++. It touches on automated trading development but not in depth. Has examples of using 3rd party trading apis.
I wish this book covered scalability, performance and latency issues as well as historical data management.


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Building Applications and Components with Visual Basic .NET

Paperback: 592 pages
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional (October 23, 2003)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0201734958
ISBN-13: 978-0201734959
Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 1.2 inches







Building Applications and Components with Visual Basic .NET is the Visual Basic developer's guide to the .NET framework and object-oriented programming.

The authors introduce the basic architecture of the .NET Framework and explore Visual Basic .NET's new OOP features, the syntax required to use them, and the effect that syntax has on code behavior. Readers gain skills essential to creating well-designed applications and component libraries for the .NET Framework.

• Among the topics explored in depth are:
• Writing software for the .NET Framework
• The Common Language Runtime (CLR)
• The Framework Class Library (FCL)
• Using Visual Basic's new object-oriented features
• Programming with delegates, events, and exceptions
• Understanding the difference between values and objects
• Assembly deployment and versioning
• COM and Visual Basic 6.0 interoperability

Building Applications and Components with Visual Basic .NET is the definitive guide to a quick and smooth transition to this new language, and an indispensable tool for becoming comfortable and productive with Visual Basic .NET.


User Review:


I can't be the only VB programmer who has been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the OO world - as I've followed VB through its update history. But in the .NET world OO is everything, including lots of concepts that I've used but never really got round to reading up on and learning from the ground up. Things like inheritance, polymorphism and delegates are obvious examples. And then there's the .NET-specific stuff, like boxing, value-types and reference-types, method over-riding and dynamic binding.

OK, so you can get away with knowing "just enough to get by", but this book really does make it easy to catch up on the concepts and terminology - even if you are fairly new to programming. I found it extremely easy to read, sharp and to the point, and even has those nice disguised touches of humor. I can't figure out yet why the FetchSlippers method in my implementation of the SuperDog class still doesn't work!

My advice: if you can't explain straight out to someone what boxing or polymorphism means now, you'll be a better programmer for reading this book. Well done Ted and Joe...


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Building a Web 2.0 Portal with ASP.NET 3.5

Paperback: 308 pages
Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc. (January 11, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0596510500
ISBN-13: 978-0596510503
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 0.9 inches







If you think you're well versed in ASP.NET, think again. This exceptional guide gives you a master class in site building with ASP.NET 3.5 and other cutting-edge Microsoft technologies. You learn how to develop rock-solid web portal applications that can withstand millions of hits every day while surviving scalability and security pressures -- not just for mass-consumer homepages, but also for dashboards that deliver powerful content aggregation for enterprises. Written by Omar AL Zabir, co-founder and CTO of Pageflakes, Building a Web 2.0 Portal with ASP.NET 3.5 demonstrates how to develop portals similar to My Yahoo!, iGoogle, and Pageflakes using ASP.NET 3.5, ASP.NET AJAX, Windows Workflow Foundation, LINQ and .NET 3.5. Through the course of the book, AL Zabir builds an open source Ajax-enabled portal prototype (available online at "www.dropthings.com"), and walks you though the design and architectural challenges, advanced Ajax concepts, performance optimization techniques, and server-side scalability problems involved. You learn how to: Implement a highly decoupled architecture following the popular n-tier, widget-based application model Provide drag-and-drop functionality, and use ASP.NET 3.5 to build the server-side part of the web layer Use LINQ to build the data access layer, and Windows Workflow Foundation to build the business layer as a collection of workflows Build client-side widgets using JavaScript for faster performance and better caching Get maximum performance out of the ASP.NET AJAX Framework for faster, more dynamic, and scalable sites Build a custom web service call handler to overcome shortcomings in ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 for asynchronous, transactional, cache-friendlyweb services Overcome JavaScript performance problems, and help the user interface load faster and be more responsive Solve scalability and security problems as your site grows from hundreds to millions of users Deploy and run a high-volume production site while solving software, hardware, hosting, and Internet infrastructure problems Building a Web 2.0 Portal with ASP.NET 3.5 also presents real-world ASP.NET challenges that the author has solved in building educational and enterprise portals, plus thirteen production disasters common to web applications serving millions of users. If you're ready to build state-of-the art, high-volume web applications, this book has exactly what you need.


User Review:


Omar is an excellent .NET programmer and I really enjoyed his book. This book gave excellent insight on running a high volume website with ASP.NET. It also dives into some of the new features of the .NET 3.5 framework. I really enjoyed the sections towards the end where he showed the type of hosting environment necessary to run a large scale website. I would also recommend subscribing to Omar's RSS feeds for excellent tips.


This book explains the techniques behind the DropThings portal [...] showing some source-code (available at www.codeplex.com) and giving a couple of tips and tricks of web 2.0 programming. The book is very interesting but it's for those developers who already know the technologies it covers (ASP.NET, C#, LINQ, WF and ASP.NET AJAX) and want to know "the best way to do it" or became aware of commom problems that big web 2.0 portals generally has.
Below is the main topics of each chapter:

Chapter 1 - Conceptual meanings of Web and ASP.NET.
Chapter 2 - How can you design your own Widgets Framework (Based on his ideas that lead him to develop his own framework) and things that you need to concern when you develop a big portal.
Chapter 3 - Tips and Tricks of developing rich client controls
Chapter 4 - How can you add LINQ and Workflow Foundation to your Data and Business Layers.
Chapter 5 - Developing Widgets itself
Chapter 6, 7, 8 and 9 - Reflections over performance (at Client, Server and "client-server" interaction)
Chapter 10 - Solving Deployment and "Go-live" problems.

Bear in mind this book don't teach you those technologies, it only leads you to use them in a better way based on the author's experience (Author is the PageFlake's co-Founder and CTO, so he really knows what he's talking about).

In conclusion, if you want to learn how you use those technologies (Asp.net Ajax, Workflow Foundation..), I recommend you to try other books. Otherwise, if you want to know more about how to create a scalable web 2.0 site, tips & tricks and the best practices of those techs at web, this book will hit at the bullseye.


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Build Your Own ASP.NET 2.0 Web Site Using C# & VB

Book Rank: #10 in [c#] , #75 in [dotnet]
Paperback: 712 pages
Publisher: SitePoint; 2 edition (October 31, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0975240285
ISBN-13: 978-0975240281
Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 7.1 x 1.4 inches





Learn how to build impressive ASP.NET 2.0 Websites in both C# and VB from scratch.

Using a practical step-by-step approach, the authors introduce the ASP.NET framework, teach you about database design, and walk you through obtaining, installing and configuring all the freely available software you need to use ASP.NET 2.0. They then show you how to build several real world Web-based applications that you can put to use instantly in your projects.

Readers will learn how to:

• Develop a fully functional Corporate Intranet with a dynamic navigation menu
• Create an email newsletter system using ASP.NET 2.0
• Build web forms using web controls, validation controls, and rich controls
• Program in both C# and VB
• Handle unforseen errors gracefully using a range of error handling techniques
• Secure applications using form authentication
• Use code-behind to streamline code.

This book doesn't force you to choose an ASP.NET language in advance - all code examples are presented in both C# (pronounced see-sharp) and VB. You can choose which one you want to use, and follow-it throughout the book. Best of all, this book doesn't assume any prior programming knowledge!

What The Reviewers Say...

"This is a very well written book and an excellent overview and introduction to developing websites in C#/VB.NET on ASP.NET 2.0." - About.com

"This is the kind of book most of the developers will be looking for not only to learn the technology faster but also to create and develop a real application in a short span of time." - ASP Alliance

"This is not your grandfather's ASP.NET 2.0 tutorial. It is not condescending, pretentious, stodgy, or deadly boring; rather, it is fresh, fun, even exciting; and, it does not take itelf too seriously. The topics flow logically from one to the next. The layout is approachable. The writers' tone is friendly. And, the writing style makes the material very accessible. I have yet to find a better book for Web development novices." - C# Online .NET


User Review:


As an experienced developer with dozens of web sites developed in traditional ASP, I was delighted finally find a decent 'getting started' book for ASP.NET, VB.NET and C# that I could use myself, and share with my Microsoft-oriented students.

Anyone making the leap from ASP to .NET knows how difficult it is to find a resource that covers enough introductory information to get started, while still presenting more advanced and useful topics -- but this is the one!

Although this book won't make you an ASP.NET guru overnight (NO book can!) -- it will certainly get you far enough up the learning curve to start producing some useful and functional code which may be reused and enhanced later as you skills and competence grow.

This new release -- as for all other SitePoint books I've read -- has proven a pleasure to read, and a joy to use in the real world. Great work!


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Build Your Own .NET Language and Compiler

Paperback: 408 pages
Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (September 18, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1590591348
ISBN-13: 978-1590591345
Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.9 x 0.9 inches

All software developers use languages, which are the fundamental tool of the trade. Despite curiosity about how languages work, few developers actually understand how. Unfortunately, most texts on language and compiler development are hard to digest, written from academic platforms for use in college-level computer science programs. On the other hand, Build Your Own .NET Language and Compiler demystifies compiler and language development, and makes the subjects palatable for all programmers.

This practical book presents techniques that you can apply to everyday work. You'll learn to add scripts and macro languages to your applications, add runtime expression evaluation to their applications, and generate code immediately. Further, you will learn parsing techniques, which are essential to extract information from any structured form of data&emdash;like text files, user input, XML, or HTML. As a bonus, the book includes a complete QuickBasic compatible compiler with source code that works. The compiler illustrates the book's techniques and acts as a versatile .NET language.

User Review:

I preordered the book and I forced to admit that I was disappointed in the end product. The title implies that a compiler is created for .NET, but it does not create a MSIL compiler (such as C# or VB.NET). The provided code while it is written in a .NET language does not produce MSIL which is what the title of the book implies, instead the compiler runs it's own p-code. There is no partially correct statement as a previous review states, either it is or it is not and this is *not* a .NET compiler.

The fact that the author writes excuses for the book in his own review of the book should tip you off that something is not what you would think it is at face value. If you read the book you will find that he also makes such a statement that the code may not be what you were expecting in the book itself. Nilges knows that something is wrong.

That being said, if you have no background in writing compilers then this book may be of some value to you as an introductory text on the subject but don't expect to find anything here of any real use to your own work. If you think that you might enjoy the book then buy it used.


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Beginning Web Development, Silverlight, and ASP.NET AJAX: From Novice to Professional (Beginning from Novice to Professional)

Paperback: 427 pages
Publisher: Apress (February 25, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1590599594
ISBN-13: 978-1590599594
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.9 x 1.1 inches




Beginning Web Development, Silverlight, and ASP.NET AJAX: From Novice to Professional aims to give you the skills you need to start building web applications with Microsoft’s next–generation technology as quickly as possible. Whether you’re interested in ASP.NET AJAX, Silverlight, or the technologies that support them (WPF, WCF, WF, etc.), this book is the starting point that you need.

It adopts a “zero to hero” approach that concentrates on achieving practical results you can use in real projects rather than presenting a deep academic treatment that can’t be immediately applied.

The aim is to give you, the reader, the knowledge you need to achieve the results you want with the minimum of fuss. When you’ve read this book, you’ll have a solid understand of all the techniques that are available, when to use them, and their relative strengths and weaknesses.
What you’ll learn

• Create next–generation web applications quickly and easily!
• Manipulate data, display information, and communicate with other services using the latest ASP.NET techniques and best practices.
• Discover how the .NET 3.0 extensions (WPF, WCF, and WF) can make your web applications faster, more efficient, and easier to code than ever.
• Understand how ASP.NET AJAX and Silverlight can be integrated into your ASP.NET websites in order to provide a cutting–edge user interface for your applications and the implications that such interfaces can have.

Who is this book for?

This book is for anyone with an interest in using Microsoft’s latest web development technologies.

A basic familiarity with the .NET platform is useful, but anyone with an understanding of a web development language will benefit from the book, as all the key topics are presented from first principals.


User Review:


This book is a good start for anyone who wants a quick overview of web technologies as offered by Microsoft. Roughly one-third of the book is dedicated to what would nowadays be called "traditional" web technologies based on ASP.NET. It covers a lot of areas (Web forms, ADO.NET, Web Services, deployment), but never dives very deep. The second part focuses on the Next Generation technologies for Web Development and provides an introduction to WCF, WPF, WWF, Cardspace, Ajax, APS.NET AJAX and Silverlight. Unfortunately, it only addresses Silverlight 1.0 and some interesting new developments such as LINQ and project Astoria are left out completely.

I noticed quite some errors in the code examples in the book (especially in the first part), which I think should have been picked up by the reviewer.

All in all, an interesting read that will certainly make the user want to visit Amazon for some more in-depth books on one or more of the many topics they've just become acquainted with.



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Beginning Visual Web Programming in VB .NET: From Novice to Professional

Paperback: 648 pages
Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (February 28, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1590593596
ISBN-13: 978-1590593592
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 1.5 inches

Beginning Web Programming in VB .NET: From Novice to Professional will teach you the fundamentals of the web environment and how Visual Studio .NET (VS .NET) makes it accessible to VB programmers. You'll build a working website that demonstrates all the elements of a VB web application. Author Daniel Cazzulino takes a step-by-step approach to each example to explore the essential technologies and how VS .NET helps to integrate them into a highly interactive, attractive web application.

In this tutorial guide you'll learn how to

• Create dynamic web pages with ASP.NET web forms and web server controls
• Display and manipulate data using ADO.NET and VS .NET components
• Persist state in different ways, within the "stateless" web environment
• Create XML files and XML schema, and use them for data transfer
• Integrate your web applications with others through web services
• Make your application more secure via the security features in ASP.NET and IIS
• Eliminate bugs and unexpected failures through effective debugging and exception-handling techniques
• Improve the performance of your application and prepare it for release

User Review:


Beginning Visual Web Programming in VB.Net is well worth a read. The book is very straight forward and the examples are such that they guide you through quite easily so that the reader can follow along without much trouble. Chapters 7 and 8 are really nice with their XML information and examples. XML is great if you need a pages that load fast and are efficient.The descriptions that come in these chapters increase your understanding of why it is such an important part of the overall structure. MSDE I personally find can be a bit of a pain when setting it up but with this particular book things seemed to go ok. Overall the book is definately worth reading and will only help in your knowledge of .NET programming.



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Beginning VB 2008: From Novice to Professional (Beginning from Novice to Professional)

Paperback: 450 pages
Publisher: Apress (February 11, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1590599381
ISBN-13: 978-1590599389
Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.9 x 1.1 inches







This book is for anyone who wants to write good Visual Basic 2008 code – even if you have never programmed before.

Writing good code can be a challenge, there are so many options, especially in a language like Visual Basic. If you want to really get the best from a programming language you need to know which features work best in which situations and understand their strengths and weaknesses. It is this understanding that makes the difference between coding and coding well.

Beginning VB 2008 has been written to teach you how to use the Visual Basic programming language to solve problems. From the earliest chapters, and from the first introductory concepts, you'll be looking at real-world programming challenges and learning how Visual Basic can be used to overcome them. As you progress through the book the problems become more involved and interesting while the solutions become correspondingly more complex and powerful as Visual Basic features interact to achieve the results that you want.

By the time you've finished reading this book and worked through the sample exercises, you'll be a confident and very competent Visual Basic programmer. You will still have many explorations of the .NET Framework API to look forward to in your future career, but you will have a firm foundation to build from and you will know exactly where to go to find the things that you need to progress confidently in your projects.

Christian Gross is dedicated to helping his readers understand every detail of Beginning VB 2008 and so you can contact him via SKYPE (christianhgross) if you have bought this book and have a question about something Christian discusses. If Christian is available when you contact him, he will even try to answer you right away!
What you’ll learn

• Become skilled in the Visual Basic 2008 programming language.
• Learn everything you need to begin building your own applications in a solid, well–considered way: this book will teach you .NET coding from the ground up.
• Use the Visual Studio IDE to create, debug, and deploy your applications.
• Understand the mysteries of database access and the many ways that it can be accomplished from VB.
• Delve deeply into the huge range of supporting technologies that the .NET Framework offers: LINQ, ASP.NET AJAX, ADO.NET 3.0, WPF, WCF, and Windows Workflow are all introduced and explained in a straightforward and easy-to-follow way.

Who is this book for?

This book is for anyone who’s just starting out to learn about Visual Basic 2008. It doesn’t assume any prior knowledge of object–oriented programming, of the .NET Framework, or of coding in general. It simply assumes that you’re an intelligent person who wants to learn and starts the journey from there.


User Review:


It's an ok, but not for an absolute beginner. I would say it's for the advanced beginner to intermediate. I've been learning VB.NET for about a year and this book really helped me grasp the concepts associated with creating classes and structured code.

For the absolute beginner, read Visual Basic 2008 Step by Step before reading this book.


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Beginning VB 2008 Databases: From Novice to Professional

Paperback: 409 pages
Publisher: Apress (September 18, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1590599470
ISBN-13: 978-1590599471
Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.9 x 0.7 inches






Beginning VB 2008 Databases teaches you everything you need to know about relational databases, SQL, and ADO.NET 2.0, giving you a sound start in developing console and Windows database applications. The book also includes chapters on the new SQL Server XML data type and the forthcoming LINQ enhancements to the next version of Visual Basic.

In addition to teaching you database basics like using SQL to communicate with databases, this book provides you with detailed, code-practical techniques to access data in Visual Basic 2008 across a range of coding situations. Code-heavy and full of practical detail, this book has been fully revised and upgraded for .NET 3.5 and offers you the best contemporary practice in this core programming area, so that you’ll find yourself using it in nearly all your .NET projects.

• Provides step-by-step instructions on how to install and configure necessary tools
• Presents all essential SQL query and update concepts and syntax, so you don’t need prior familiarity with relational databases or SQL
• Describes how to use ADO.NET transactions, exceptions, and events
• Covers ADO.NET features for handling XML, text, and binary data within a Visual Basic 2008 context
• Explains all concepts through straightforward code examples

What you’ll learn

• How relational databases work and how to use them
• How Visual Basic uses ADO.NET to access databases
• How to write stored procedures in T-SQL and call them from Visual Basic programs
• How to use XML in database applications
• How to use LINQ to simplify VB database programming
• How to install SQL Server 2005 Express and use it to teach yourself databases by doing databases

Who is this book for?

Beginning VB 2008 Databases is for every VB programmer. Database programming requires relatively little knowledge of VB but a lot of knowledge about relational database concepts and the database language SQL. This book assumes no prior database experience and teaches you, always through hands-on examples, how to create and use relational databases with SQL and how to access them with VB. Almost every application needs to access a database, and this book teaches all the fundamentals you may ever need to develop professional database applications.

About the Apress Beginning Series

The Beginning series from Apress is the right choice to get the information you need to land that crucial entry-level job. These books will teach you a standard and important technology from the ground up because they are explicitly designed to take you from “novice to professional.” You’ll start your journey by seeing what you need to knowbut without needless theory and filler. You’ll build your skill set by learning how to put together real-world projects step by step. So whether your goal is your next career challenge or a new learning opportunity, the Beginning series from Apress will take you thereit is your trusted guide through unfamiliar territory!


User Review:


This book was more than I expected. The layout of the book makes it very easy to grasp the concepts the author is presenting. He explains a topic and then there is a simple exercise to reinfoce the concept. It is basic and doesn't go very deeply into the topics, but that's what I liked. I liked having a few hundred page book instead of a 1000 or 1500 page monster. Eventually you may have to get another book that goes into more detail on the topics listed, but for starting out learning about database/application interaction I thought it was a very good book.


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Beginning Object-Oriented ASP.NET 2.0 with VB .NET: From Novice to Professional (Beginning: From Novice to Professional)

Paperback: 216 pages
Publisher: Apress (September 19, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1590595386
ISBN-13: 978-1590595381
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 0.7 inches






Beginning Object-Oriented ASP.NET 2.0 with VB .NET covers all of the basics, from definition to inheritance. This book even includes a chapter on Visual Studio 2005 and Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, enabling you to create ASP.NET 2.0 applications. Also included are chapters on creating web forms, web controls, and web services. Code samples illustrate the usage of each concept.
If you have a background in procedural programming, this book will teach you what a class is, how it relates to an object, and how to model real-world data into a class. You will be able to create a class in VB .NET, add properties and methods, and use that class in a simple ASP.NET web application created with VB .NET.


User Review:


This book is far too short. Given its small size, its a shame the author pads it out so much with gratuitous screen shots and repetitive coding example, while major OOP concepts (such as implementing interfaces) are left out on the grounds that they are "outside the scope of the book". This book needs far more scope.


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Beginning Microsoft Visual C# 2008

Book Rank: #23 in [c#]
Paperback: 1307 pages
Publisher: Wrox (May 5, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 047019135X
ISBN-13: 978-0470191354
Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.8 inches



The book is aimed at novice programmers who wish to learn programming with C# and the .NET framework. The book starts with absolute programming basics. It then moves into Web and Windows programming, data access (databases and XML), and more advanced technologies such as graphics programming with GDI+ and basic networking. The book is divided into sections including:

• The C# Language: Basic language skills using console application. Content moves from the absolute basics to fairly involved OOP skills.
• Windows Vista Programming: Using basic Windows applications, reinforcing earlier OOP and debugging skills.
• Web Programming: Putting together basic Web applications, highlighting differences between Web and Windows programming.
• Data Access: Accessing all kinds of data sources from Web and Windows applications, including SQL usage, XML, file system data, and Web Services.
• Additional Techniques: "The fun stuff", including Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Workflow, Windows Communication Foundation, GDI+, networking, Windows Services, and so on.

The book makes complicated subjects seem easy to learn, and it inspires readers to investigate areas further on their own by providing references to additional material, and exercise questions that require significant effort and personal research to complete.


User Review:


As far as 1300 page programming books go, this one is well above average. It covers both Visual Studio 2008 and the free Visual C# 2008 Express Edition using Express for most of the examples. C sharp is a great language if you've done any C, C++ or object oriented programming before. One can argue even if you have zero programming experience it's still the best overall language to learn. It's elegant, powerful, works for desktop apps, mobile apps, server apps and is multi-platform. C# is one of those rare things that Microsoft did well.

There's something here for everyone including C# language basics, object oriented programming theory, introduction to UML, Windows programming, web programming, databases, etc. It starts with an intro to C# in 7 chapters before introducing Object Oriented programming which is a different approach than many books. You can download the code at wrox.com.

THE GOOD: The authors manage to keep it readable and concise at the same time. There's not a lot of extra anecdotes and filler like you'll find in many beginning programming books. Most every sentence conveys something useful without being excessively dry. I haven't found many mistakes which seem all too common these days in similar books.

THE BAD: The authors sometimes mention concepts they haven't explained or even introduced yet. Often they point out when they're doing so (i.e. "don't worry about xxxx we'll explain later") but in many instances the reader is left wondering if he missed something earlier in the book only to find the answer in the next chapter. A total programming novice might find this book a bit intimidating as the authors do sometimes assume significant knowledge on behalf of the reader. For example the Object Oriented chapters dive right into UML and other confusing topics with little hand holding. But, personally, I think they did a good job of trying to include lots of useful information versus spending lots of pages on things that most readers will already know.


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Beginning Microsoft Visual Basic 2008

Book Rank: #4 in [visual basic introduction] , # 41 [ visual basic]
Paperback: 912 pages
Publisher: Wrox (May 5, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0470191341
ISBN-13: 978-0470191347
Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 2.3 inches



Beginning Microsoft Visual Basic 2008 is designed to teach you how to write useful programs in Visual Basic 2008 as quickly and easily as possible.

There are two kinds of beginners for whom this book is ideal:

• You’re a beginner to programming and you’ve chosen Visual Basic 2008 as the place to start. That’s a great choice! Visual Basic 2008 is not only easy to learn, it’s also fun to use and very powerful.
• You can program in another language but you’re a beginner to .NET programming. Again, you’ve made a great choice! Whether you’ve come from Fortran or Visual Basic 6, you’ll find that this book quickly gets you up to speed on what you need to know to get the most from Visual Basic 2008.

Visual Basic 2008 offers a great deal of functionality in both tools and language. No one book could ever cover Visual Basic 2008 in its entirety—you would need a library of books. What this book aims to do is to get you started as quickly and easily as possible. It shows you the roadmap, so to speak, of what there is and where to go. Once we’ve taught you the basics of creating working applications (creating the windows and controls, how your code should handle unexpected events, what object-oriented programming is, how to use it in your applications, and so on), we’ll show you some of the areas you might want to try your hand at next. To this end, the book is organized as follows:

• Chapters 1 through 9 provide an introduction to Visual Studio 2008 and Windows programming.
• Chapter 6 provides an introduction to XAML and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) programming.
• Chapter 10 provides an introduction to application debugging and error handling.
• Chapters 11 through 13 provide an introduction to object-oriented programming and building objects.
• Chapter 14 provides an introduction to creating Windows Forms user controls.
• Chapter 15 provides an introduction to graphics in Windows applications.
• Chapters 16 and 17 provide an introduction to programming with databases and covers Access, SQL Server, ADO.NET and LINQ.
• Chapters 18 and 19 provide an introduction to ASP.NET and show you how to write applications for the Web.
• Chapter 20 provides a brief introduction to XML, a powerful tool for integrating your applications—regardless of the language they were written in.
• Chapter 21 introduces you to web services and the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF).
• Chapter 22 introduces you to sequential workflows using the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF).
• Chapter 23 introduces you to building applications for mobile devices using the Compact Framework classes.
• Chapter 24 introduces you to deploying applications using ClickOnce technology.
• Chapter 25 provides some insight on where to go next in your journey to learn about VisualBasic 2008.
• Appendix A provides the answers to chapter exercises.
• Appendix B introduces the Microsoft Solution Framework.
• Appendix C provides some background on security.
• Appendix D provides insight into Windows CardSpace.
• Appendix E compares the differences between the latest versions of the .NET Framework.

From the Back Cover
Beginning Microsoft Visual Basic 2008

If you want to learn Visual Basic 2008 so you can create powerful, database-driven applications, then this is the book for you. It walks you through this robust programming language and shows you how to build a variety of different Windows® applications and web services. Along the way you'll discover how to utilize object-oriented techniques as well as create your own business objects and Windows controls.

After a brief introduction to Visual Studio® 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Framework, you'll explore the fundamentals of the Visual Basic language. Exercises at the end of each chapter provide you with a deeper understanding of how to use these features to build rich and professional-looking applications for Microsoft Windows, intranet and Internet use, and mobile devices. The concepts covered are invaluable and will take your Visual Basic development skills to the next level.

What you will learn from this book

• All about the features of Visual Studio 2008 and Windows programming
• Techniques for incorporating error handling in your application
• How to create and use Windows Forms controls
• Strategies for accessing databases using Microsoft Access® and Visual Basic 2008
• Tips for incorporating XML in Visual Basic 2008
• How to write applications for mobile devices using Windows Presentation Foundation

Who this book is for
This book is for beginning programmers who have chosen to start with Visual Basic 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Framework.

Wrox Beginning guides are crafted to make learning programming languages and technologies easier than you think, providing a structured, tutorial format that will guide you through all the techniques involved.



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Beginning DotNetNuke 4.0 Website Creation in VB 2005 with Visual Web Developer 2005 Express: From Novice to Professional

Paperback: 448 pages
Publisher: Apress (November 28, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1590597672
ISBN-13: 978-1590597675
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 1 inches





DotNetNuke is a programming framework that helps you create and deploy web projects in ASP.NET 2.0. Its ease of use means that even nonprogrammers can take advantage of the new ASP.NET 2.0 features when building a web site. It integrates with many of Microsofts other free products like SQL Server 2005 Express, which makes it a powerful and attractive option for developing web sites.

Beginning DotNetNuke 4.0 Website Creation in VB 2005 with Visual Web Developer 2005 Express contains detailed instructions for the installation of DotNetNuke, Visual Web Developer, and SQL Server 2005. This ensures that no matter what your level or ability, youll have a working suite of tools as you work through the book and your ASP.NET 2.0 career. The book also features tutorials on creating and publishing an ASP.NET 2.0 web site written in Visual Basic 2005taking care not to exclude anyone whos utilizing this book strictly to get up to speed on DotNetNuke.

User Review:


This is a very good introduction to DotNetNuke. It will help you install DNN on you own machine and guide you through building a simple website.

If you know a little about programming in VB and know something about HTML and CSS, this book will show you how to write your own DNN modules and create your own DNN skins and containers. You won't learn how to write complex modules or elaborate skins but you'll learn the basics.

If you already know how to install DNN and how to create DNN modules and skins, this book is not for you.

If you know nothing about programming in VB and know nothing about HTML, then you should probably learn about them before you tackle this book.



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Beginning DotNetNuke 4.0 Website Creation in C# 2005 with Visual Web Developer 2005 Express: From Novice to Professional

Format: Kindle Edition
Print Length: 416 pages
Publisher: Apress (June 20, 2006)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
ASIN: B001DA0FRO







Are you tasked with creating and maintaining a web presence? Do you suspect that there is a better way to manage business internally? Beginning DotNetNuke 4.0 Website Creation in C# 2005 with Visual Web Developer 2005 Express is for you. It leads you through the emerging world of web portals by applying the most user-friendly and current development software, like C# Express and the powerful, flexible DotNetNuke. You will learn to create the professional web presence your company needs.

The book takes you through the steps necessary to get an internal web portal running for employee use. If you have some programming experience and creativity, this book will help you expand your business presence in a short amount of time. It features simple explanations and proof-of-concept examples throughout. The book concludes with the creation of a web portlet that you can plug into an external website for a web presence.


User Review:

This book advertises that it is first and foremost about DotNetNuke 4.0, and it is the first book out on 4.0. That should have told me something. The book focuses on teaching you how to use and install, Dot Net 2.0, Visual Web Developer Express, and it has a chapter teaching you how to use C#. The first two should already be understood by a person trying to setup and use DotNetNuke.

C# is introduced and described, as I said earlier, in one chapter. However you can't teach C# in one chapter. What results is a mishmash of advanced and beginning topics with nothing covered in depth.

With so much devoted to C#, VWD, Dot Net 2.0, DotNetNuke gets short shift and no 4.0 topic is covered in enough depth. Simply put he doesn't do enough with DotNet Nuke and too much with peripheral topics.

The big issues, Module Development, Skinning and site administration are just not adequately covered.

Wait for other books on DotNetNuke. Hopefully they'll do a better job as most are written by members of the development team.


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Beginning C# Objects: From Concepts to Code

Paperback: 819 pages
Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (May 17, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 159059360X
ISBN-13: 978-1590593608
Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 1.7 inches






Beginning C# Objects: From Concepts to Code is a comprehensive yet approachable guide for anyone interested in learning the C# language, beginning with the basics.

To begin, this book addresses the two fundamental concepts that programmers must grasp in order to write a professional object-oriented C# application: the nature and characteristics of objects, and the structure that allows you to take best advantage of C#'s object-oriented makeup.

In addition to the basics of C# syntax, this book introduces object terminology&emdash;teaching you how to think in terms of objects&emdash;and provides an introduction of object modeling, illustrating how to translate an object model into C# code with ease.

For folks who have already attempted to learn C# but are still having trouble mastering C#'s object-oriented nature, the case study format of this book will be invaluable in showing you how to translate a UML model into a fully-functional C# application.

An overwhelming number of programmers are now moving to C# as their language of choice for developing powerful, maintainable, scalabe software applications. Whether you're learning C# as your first programming language, moving to C# from a non-object-oriented language, or have previously programmed with C# but still feel unsure when it comes to object aspects, this book is a perfect fit for you.

User Review:

A monumentally comprehensive explanation of object-oriented programming, instantiated in C#. Barker and Palmer cover all the concepts of OO. But for this to be meaningful to a reader, you have to pick a language in which to express these concepts. They chose C#. In no small way because there are two OO languages in common use: C++ and Java. For each of these, you can easily find several well written books on how to implement OO in them.

Whereas C# is scarcely three years old. Certainly, there are books about it. But the authors have focussed on object modelling and use this, in a top-down fashion, to drive the description of C#'s properties.

If you are already fluent in OO from elsewhere, then you will breeze through the OO ideas here. I daresay that the authors would be the first to state that they invent nothing new in OO concepts here. But if you are new to OO, this book will certainly educate you. Though be prepared to block out a substantial number of days to go through it!


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Beginning C# 2008: From Novice to Professional

Paperback: 550 pages
Publisher: Apress; 2 edition (September 15, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1430210338
ISBN-13: 978-1430210337
Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.9 x 1.1 inches





This book is for anyone who wants to write good C# code—even if you have never programmed before. Writing good code can be a challenge—there are so many options, especially in a .NET language like C#. If you want to really get the best from a programming language, you need to know which features work best in which situations and understand their strengths and weaknesses. It is this understanding that makes the difference between coding and coding well.

Beginning C# 2008: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition has been written to teach you how to use the C# programming language to solve problems. From the earliest chapters, and from the first introductory concepts, you’ll be looking at real–world programming challenges and learning how C# can be used to overcome them. As you progress through the book, the problems become more involved and interesting, while the solutions become correspondingly more complex and powerful as C# features interact to achieve the results that you want.

This second edition has been revised and improved to now include the latest SQL Server 2008 release and explain how you can integrate SQL Server 2008 with your C# applications.

By the time you’ve finished reading this book and worked through the sample exercises, you’ll be a confident and very competent C# programmer. You will still have many explorations of the .NET Framework API to look forward to, but you will have a firm foundation to build from, and you will know exactly where to go to find the things that you need to progress confidently in your projects.
What you’ll learn

• Everything to get you started with C# 2008 from scratch—from installing the tools to writing your first applications.
• The core concepts of .NET 3.5 programming: from decision trees to data structures, from exceptions to lambda expressions, and from objects to components.
• Learn what LINQ is, why functional programming can be important, how generics make your life easier, and much, much, more!

Who is this book for

This book is for anyone who’s just starting out to learn about C#. It doesn’t assume any prior knowledge of object–oriented programming, of the .NET Framework, or of coding in general. It simply assumes that you’re an intelligent person who wants to learn and starts the journey from there.
About the Apress Beginning Series

The Beginning series from Apress is the right choice to get the information you need to land that crucial entry–level job. These books will teach you a standard and important technology from the ground up because they are explicitly designed to take you from “novice to professional.” You’ll start your journey by seeing what you need to know—but without needless theory and filler. You’ll build your skill set by learning how to put together real–world projects step by step. So whether your goal is your next career challenge or a new learning opportunity, the Beginning series from Apress will take you there—it is your trusted guide through unfamiliar territory!


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Beginning C# 2008 Databases: From Novice to Professional (Beginning from Novice to Professional)

Paperback: 482 pages
Publisher: Apress; illustrated edition edition (January 11, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1590599004
ISBN-13: 978-1590599006
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 1.3 inches






Assuming only basic knowledge of C# 2008, Beginning C# 2008 Databases teaches all the fundamentals of database technology and database programming readers need to quickly become highly proficient database users and application developers.

A comprehensive tutorial on both SQL Server 2005 and ADO.NET 3.0, Beginning C# 2008 Databases explains and demonstrates how to create database objects and program against them in both T–SQL and C#. Full of practical, detailed examples, it’s been fully revised and updated for C# 2008 and offers the most complete, detailed, and gentle introduction to database technology for all C# programmers at any level of experience.

• Comprehensively and concisely explains fundamental database concepts and programming techniques
• Rich in working examples of both T–SQL and C# programs
• Covers all the features most database programming ever requires

What you’ll learn

• How relational databases work and how to use them
• How C# uses ADO.NET to access databases
• How to write stored procedures in T–SQL and call them from C# programs
• How to use XML in database applications
• How to use LINQ to simplify C# database programming
• How to install SQL Server 2005 Express and Visual C# 3.0
• Express and use them to teach yourself database programming by doing it

Who is this book for?

Beginning C# 2008 Databases is for every C# programmer. Database programming requires relatively little knowledge of C# but a lot of knowledge about relational database concepts and the database language SQL. This book assumes no prior database experience and teaches you, always through hands–on examples, how to create and use relational databases with SQL and how to access them with C#. Almost every application needs to access a database, and this book teaches all the fundamentals you needand may ever needto develop professional database applications.
About the Apress Beginning Series

The Beginning series from Apress is the right choice to get the information you need to land that crucial entry-level job. These books will teach you a standard and important technology from the ground up because they are explicitly designed to take you from “novice to professional.” You’ll start your journey by seeing what you need to know—but without needless theory and filler. You’ll build your skill set by learning how to put together real–world projects step by step. So whether your goal is your next career challenge or a new learning opportunity, the Beginning series from Apress will take you there—it is your trusted guide through unfamiliar territory!
Related Titles from Apress

• Beginning C# 2008: From Novice to Professional
• Beginning Database Design: From Novice to Professional
• Pro C# 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform, Fourth Edition
• Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008

User Review:

This book strikes an unfortunate balance between being too broad for a beginner to learn from, too basic for an intermediate developer to find anything new, and too unfocused to serve any one purpose well. The book should be titled "SQL Server review, C# Console Applications, and a Broad Overview of Visual Studio." That is about all that you will see in this book. Want to know how to integrate windows form applications or websites with databases? Want to know how to do the code-behind for those projects? You will not find any of those answers in this book. I really have no idea what the editors were thinking in sending this book to press.

The authors clearly know their material and convey it very well to the reader, but the weakness of the book is the selection of material covered. Why dedicate one-fourth of the book reviewing SQL basics? Any reader attempting C# databases should already know SQL basics. If the reader does not know them, then the 100 page overview is not nearly in-depth enough to teach it. Why dedicate the last few chapters to the basics of forms and web pages in Visual Studio if those chapters don't go into any detail on incorporating datasets or datareaders into those forms and pages? The book is supposed to be about C# and databases, not website design or user controls. And why do nothing but console applications, rather than windows forms? Talk about narrowing down your audience.

I thought this book would help me to build windows forms that would form the GUIs for SQL databases. Instead, I threw this book down in disgust after spending hours flipping through chapters of review on SQL and then chapters that scratch the surface of C# databases with nothing but examples of console applications, followed by an overview of very basic concepts of Visual Studio. The only people whom I could recommend this book to would be...

a) Individuals who already have experience in building C# databases with older versions of SQL Server and Visual Studio (say, 2000 and 2003, respectively) and who have not done any development recently. This might be a good refresher for what they already learned but may have forgotten, though I still think that you could find a better reference than this.
b) Someone who wants to build console applications. If you have the urge to build a console application that extracts data from a database, then this is the book for you.

For anyone else, I recommend looking elsewhere. I returned this book to Borders and purchased Pro ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008. While that book is more expensive, three times longer, and focuses more on webpages than on applications, it is more relevant to C# databases than what this book delivered.


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Beginning C# 3.0: An Introduction to Object Oriented Programming

Paperback: 523 pages
Publisher: Wrox (May 12, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0470261293
ISBN-13: 978-0470261293
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 1.4 inches




Learn all the basics of C# 3.0 from Beginning C# 3.0: An Introduction to Object Oriented Programming, a book that presents introductory information in an intuitive format. If you have no prior programming experience but want a thorough, easy-to-understand introduction to C# and Object Oriented Programming, this book is an ideal guide. Using the tutorials and hands-on coding examples, you can discover tried and true tricks of the trade, understand design concepts, employ debugging aids, and design and write C# programs that are functional and that embody safe programming practices.


User Review:


I've read several of Dr. Purdum's books in the past and have always found them informative and enjoyable to read. Beginning C# 3.0, An introduction to Object Oriented Programming (Wrox) is one of his best book yet. As he asks in the introduction, there are dozens of C# texts out there, so why should you pick this one? His answer is that, while most of the other texts were written by extremely capable programmers, few of the authors have never stood in front of several hundred students looking for examples that teach the material yet are easy to understand and remember. Several of the key strengths of this book are the examples and the way Dr. Purdum anticipates the reader's questions.

For example, in covering the OOP concept of encapsulation in Chapter 2, he discusses why programmers hide the data properties of an object inside the object. He states: "You hide them for the same reason that kings used to hide their daughters in the castle tower...to keep other people from messing around with them." Later on, when discussing the difference between public and private access specifiers, he points out that using the public access specifier is like locking the princess in the castle tower and then passing out her room key to all the knights of the realm. I don't know about you, but this is easier for me to remember this than some dry explanation that one often reads on encapsulation.

Another strength is the way he anticipates rough spots for the student. One of the most difficult concepts for beginning programmers is the difference between value types and reference types. Dr. Purdum uses a simple explanation of what a symbol table is to discuss l-values and r-values. He then introduces a concept he developed called Bucket Analogy which uses the symbol table concepts to explain the difference between the two classes of data. Even experienced programmers will appreciate this example and how it truly makes the differences clear. He uses a job interview to explain what objects are as well as cookie cutters to explain instantiation. The book does reflect his 25 years of teaching experience.

The material covered is what you'd expect for an introductory text. He also covers relatively new topics like Generics and LINQ. The database chapter even has a fairly complete DBMS. However, the entire theme is to teach OOP and good coding techniques. For example, he'll write a code example that works but then calls it an example of RDC (Really Dumb Code). He then rewrites the code and explains why it is a better solution, especially when writing for a commercial environment. His objective is to teach you good OOP techniques using C# as the vehicle to learn those techniques. His experience owning a software company for 17 years shows through while doing this.

If you want to get a solid introduction to OOP and C#, choosing this book is one of the best choices you can make.


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Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in VB 2008: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition

Book Rank: #37 in [vb] , #71 in [asp]
Paperback: 956 pages
Publisher: Apress; 2 edition (November 12, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 159059892X
ISBN-13: 978-1590598924
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 2.1 inches




Matthew MacDonald is an author, educator, and MCSD developer who has a passion for emerging technologies. He is a regular writer for developer journals such as Inside Visual Basic, ASPToday, and Hardcore Visual Studio .NET, and he's the author of several books about programming with .NET, including User Interfaces in VB .NET: Windows Forms and Custom Controls, The Book of VB .NET, and .NET Distributed Applications. In a dimly remembered past life, he studied English literature and theoretical physics. Send e-mail to him with praise, condemnation, and everything in between, to p2p@prosetech.com. --sources

The most up-to-date and comprehensive introductory ASP.NET book you'll find on any shelf, Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in VB 2008 guides you through Microsoft's latest technology for building dynamic web sites. This book will enable you to build dynamic web pages on the fly, and it assumes only the most basic knowledge of VB 2008. The book provides exhaustive coverage of ASP.NET, guiding you from your first steps right up to the most advanced techniques, such as querying databases from within a web page and tuning your site for optimal performance. Within these pages, you'll find tips for "best practices" and comprehensive discussions of key database and XML principles you need to know in order to be effective with ASP.NET. The book also emphasizes the invaluable coding techniques of object orientation and code behind, which will start you off on the track to building real-world web sites right from the beginningrather than just faking it with simplified coding practices. By the time you've finished the book, you will have mastered the core techniques and have all the knowledge you need to begin work as a professional ASP.NET developer.


User Review:


This is an excellent book for experienced programmers, such as me, wanting in-depth knowledge they can apply on the job. This book is not, however, for novice programmers as the book's title suggests. For example, in Chapter 4 the succinct explanation of "Storing Information in the List" for the Currency Converter will I suspect completely confuse the inexperienced programmer.

You will learn what you need to know to be an effective working ASP.NET developer--the coverage is through.

The book provides extensive references to supplementary material such as www.w3schools.com/xhtml which the working developer needs to know but is not directly germane to the coverage of ASP.NET 3.5.

The Note and Tip sections are very useful in describing ways to solve problems just discussed or to provide alternate ways to do what was just discussed.

The author provides solutions to problems that other writers just don't. For example, instead of just saying that using session state is not scalable and stopping there McDonald offers a way to make session state much more scalable and shows you how. Another example would be overlapping exception handlers. This is just the kind of additional information a working professional needs to implement a more responsive and better website.

The code examples are clear and they work. Almost every chapter has ready-to-run code examples all of which work in IE (I haven't tested in FF).

The only downsides I found in the book are: Inexperienced programmers will get lost. I did find one typo in the code printed in the book on page 198 but not in the downloadable code samples. Also, it would have been helpful to have the URLs for the Pubs and Northwind database downloads from Microsoft instead of just referring to a readme.txt file I didn't have.

I have being doing serious ASP.NET development work since VS 2003 was released and have five other ASP.NET books NONE of which are as useful as this book--it is the best one in my library. If you are an experienced programmer wanting in-depth knowledge of ASP.NET get this book . If you are not an experienced programmer or have no knowledge of ASP.NET get another book this book is probably not for you.


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Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition

Book Rank: #12 in [asp] , #32 in [c#]
Paperback: 954 pages
Publisher: Apress; 2 edition (November 15, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1590598911
ISBN-13: 978-1590598917
Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 2 inches





The most up–to–date and comprehensive introductory ASP.NET book you’ll find on any shelf, Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008 guides you through Microsoft’s latest technology for building dynamic web sites. This book will enable you to build dynamic web pages on the fly, and it assumes only the most basic knowledge of C#.

The book provides exhaustive coverage of ASP.NET, guiding you from your first steps right up to the most advanced techniques, such as querying databases from within a web page and tuning your site for optimal performance. Within these pages, you’ll find tips for “best practices” and comprehensive discussions of key database and XML principles you need to know in order to be effective with ASP.NET. The book also emphasizes the invaluable coding techniques of object orientation and code behind, which will start you off on the track to building real–world web sites right from the beginning—rather than just faking it with simplified coding practices.

By the time you’ve finished the book, you will have mastered the core techniques and have all the knowledge you need to begin work as a professional ASP.NET developer.


User Review:

I have purchased (what feels like) hundreds of computer related books from Amazon.com (including other ASP.NET books), and this is the first one that I have ever felt the need to comment on.

This is just a great book, in my opinion! I found the book to be very easy to read, and logical to follow - Matthew MacDonald's writing style is very effective in communicating technical information in a way that made it easy for me to understand.

I've been developing Windows client applications (VB/C#) for close to 10 years, and have "played around" with ASP.NET 2.0. I knew how to make some basic web apps work, but didn't really understand what was going on underneath the covers. I had a lot of questions that were answered and now have a lot more confidence going forward with creating ASP.NET apps.

As I mentioned, I had purchased ASP.NET books by different authors (for 1.1 and 2.0). Maybe I never gave those books a chance, but this is by far the best that I have come across.



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Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 Databases Beta Preview

Paperback: 427 pages
Publisher: Wrox (March 18, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0764570811
ISBN-13: 978-0764570810
Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.3 x 1.2 inches







With help from Microsoft ASP.NET insider Bradley Millington, this book will be the first book available on ASP.NET Databases when the first beta is put into wide distribution in 2004.

The book covers both VB.NET and C# coding for ASP.NET databases so readers don't have to decide up front which language they want more and retailers no longer have to manage inventory on separate language versions.

By returning to a single lead author (John Kauffman) with technical input and guidance from one other technical expert (Bradley Millington), the book regains cohesiveness and a single voice and vision.

This edition is completely written from scratch on ASP.NET "Whidbey" to insure the coverage is most appropriate for this greatly changed version.

The book focuses on solving business problems in a logical progression from connecting to displaying to changing the data. Additional chapters cover enhancements to the presentation and alternate types of data. The book follows Kauffman’s practice of going beyond the basic techniques to discuss the permutations, pitfalls and best practices that occur in real business scenarios.

From the Back Cover
Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 Databases Beta Preview

ASP.NET 2.0 will bring sweeping changes to the ASP database landscape. This introduction to adding data to your Web site with the public beta prepares you for the changes. You can take a first-hand look at the promised developer productivity improvements and decide whether or not they'll benefit your applications.

You will move in a logical progression from connecting to displaying to changing data, including alternate data types, presentation enhancements, and more. The authors guide you around the pitfalls, explain the peculiarities, and provide you with best practices using real-world business situations. Packed with examples and explanations, plus Q&A review at the end of each chapter, this book focuses entirely on the new techniques in ASP.NET version 2.0 and will have you ahead of the curve for the new version final release.

What you will learn from this book

• Fundamentals of connecting your Web pages to databases
• Complete scenarios with SQL Server, Oracle®, MySQL®, Access, and XML
• Tricks and traps to displaying data in grids, lists, and trees
• How to allow users to change, add, and delete data
• Techniques for creating data objects and events and handling data errors

Who this book is for

This book is for database developers seeking a Web front end or Web programmers who want to add data to a site. You must have a basic knowledge of HTML and database design. Some experience with the ASP.NET 2.0 beta is helpful.

"Simple, straightforward tutorials and a conversational style make this book approachable to the novice developer, while also demonstrating several real-world scenarios and tips that will be appreciated by those already familiar with the basics."
—Bradley Millington, Program Manager, Web Platform and Tools Team, Microsoft Corporation


User Review:

There are several other previous ASP.NET 2.0 books available but they are all out of date as there are some major changes from beta 1 to beta 2. Beta 2 (which there's a good preview available of as of March in the form of a new "community technical preview" on MSDN) should be close to the final feature set developers will see when ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005 finally releases. So, beta 2 is now a good point for developers to get familiar with ASP.NET 2.0 in preparation for final release.
Given that the point of ASP.NET 2.0 is to build data-driven sites, Kauffman's database-centric book is a good way to look at it.
The most important change in beta 2 is ASP.NET 2.0's new ties to the "SQL Server 2005 Express Edition" product. This is detailed well in one of the early chapters here.
After that the author covers all the routine ASP.NET data techniques you'll need to know including:
Displaying data
Paging and sorting data
Filtering data
Updating, deleting, inserting data
Working with XML


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Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 and Databases

Paperback: 535 pages
Publisher: Wrox (August 7, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0471781347
ISBN-13: 978-0471781349
Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 1.3 inches

• Combining both VB.Net and C# coverage in one book, this guide focuses on using ASP.NET 2.0 for solving business dynamic Web site challenges in a logical progression, from connecting to a database to displaying information to changing data
• Covers the fundamentals of connecting Web pages to databases, techniques for creating data objects and events, and ways to handle data errors
• Features tricks and traps for displaying data in grids, lists, and trees
• Goes beyond the usual basic techniques to discuss the best practices and pitfalls that can occur in real-world scenarios with SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, Access, and the new SQL Server Express Edition

From the Back Cover
ASP.NET is Microsoft's popular technology for creating dynamic web sites that pull unique information for each visitor rather than showing everyone the same static HTML pages. The introduction of the exciting 2.0 version allows for a far easier relationship between data and ASP.NET than ever before. In this book, bestselling author John Kauffman and Microsoft ASP.NET data insider Bradley Millington guide you through the most important uses of ASP.NET—working with databases in your ASP.NET web sites.


As you progress from simple to more complex topics, you'll be introduced to the many additional ASP.NET and data connectivity tools that Microsoft's Web Platform and Tools team has released. Kauffman and Millington take you beyond the basics to discuss the permutations, pitfalls, and best practices that occur in real business scenarios.

What you will learn from this book

• Fundamentals of connecting web pages to databases
• The connections to Access, SQL Server, Oracle®, XML, and other data sources
• Various tricks and traps for displaying data in grids, lists, and trees
• How to allow users to change, add, and delete data
• Techniques for creating data objects and events
• Ways to handle data errors

Who this book is for

This book is for anyone who needs a web front-end or is looking to add data to a site. A comfortable level of understanding with ASP.NET version 1.x or ASP version 3.0 is recommended. Readers should also have some familiarity with databases.

Wrox Beginning guides are crafted to make learning programming languages and technologies easier than you think, providing a structured, tutorial format that will guide you through all the techniques involved.

User Review:

ASP.NET 2.0 is Microsoft's latest version of the software to connect between the web and a database. The previous version of ASP.NET has been greatly simplified to produce the same results with much less code required.

This book presumes some experience with ASP and some experience with databases. Several different databases are covered in the book including Microsoft Access, SQL Server and SQL Server Express. The author recommends that you not use Access (and I agree). He points out that Access was not designed to scale to large applications. I'll point out that the SQL used in Access is quite different than that used in either version SQL Server. Switching from Access to SQL Server at a later time is a pain. (It took me several days to find out about all the differences and then a couple of weeks to change over a web site of about a hundred pages.)

This book is as complete an introduction to ASP.NET 2.0 as you're going to get. It's well written and complete. But don't get to thinking that you're going to have a full fledged dynamic web site up and running tomorrow. This is a programming language like any other. You'll have to learn how it works.



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