ASP.NET is one of the hottest and latest technologies used
for building fast and secured server-side applications. No wonder, ASP.NET 2.0
has simplified the work for developers by introducing new Web form controls,
namespaces, and classes. Moreover, developers need not have to spend a long
time coding as it has been reduced to a great extent due to the introduction of
new features. There are many resources available on the Web for learning
ASP.NET 2.0. The main disadvantage of this is that learners have to be online
to access these materials. Moreover, none of them completely touches all
aspects of the technology.
Programming ASP.NET, by Jesse
Liberty and Dan Hurwitz, is an excellent resource for learners and developers
as this book covers almost all the areas involved with ASP.NET 2.0. The book
has been divided into 19 chapters and 2 appendixes. The first chapter examines
the general concepts of ASP.NET 2.0, such as its history, new features, and
also Visual Studio 2005. This chapter also includes a short write-up about
mobile devices. The second chapter covers Visual Studio 2005. It is a long
chapter that outlines each and every item shipped with the Integrated
Development Environment (IDE). The third chapter examines some of the
fundamental concepts, such as event handling, ASP.NET server controls. The
fourth and fifth chapter examines the basic and advanced controls included with
ASP.NET 2.0.
An important point to note is that each control has been
explained with one example and complete source code. The authors have provided
a list of useful properties for each control in tabular format along with
relevant explanations. Some of the interesting facts have been given in small
font either as a tip or note. As I mentioned above, Chapter 5 covers advanced
controls such as Multiview, View, FileUpload and Calendar, in addition to many
others.
Chapters 6 and 7 examine the concepts behind State,
Directives, Tracing, Debugging and Error Handling with the help of screenshots.
While chapter 8 covers about Validation controls, chapter 9 provides an
exhaustive coverage about Data Access controls such as GridView, DataList,
Repeater, DetailsView and FormsView. Chapter 10 provides a comprehensive
overview about ADO.NET such as establishing a connection with a database and
creation of primary and foreign keys in addition to the usual topics.
While chapter 11 examines all the aspects of Security,
chapter 12 provides a nice coverage about Master Pages and Navigation. Chapter
13 provides a brief overview of the new features included with ASP.NET 2.0 such
as Personalization, Themes, Skins and Web Parts. Chapter 14 examines the
creation of user controls with the help of examples. Web Services are a core
part of the .NET Framework, and this topic has been examined in detail in chapters
15 and 16. The authors delve deep into the topic with the help of pictures,
source code, and explanations of each of the properties. Chapter 15 also
includes a sample Web service application called StockTicketComplete with
complete source code.
Chapter 17 examines the concepts behind caching and some of
the performance related issues including benchmarking and profiling. The final
two chapters deal with configuration and deployment of ASP.NET applications.
The authors have provided a good coverage about the various kinds of deployment,
such as creating a setup project with the built-in setup wizard and much more.
This book ships with two useful appendixes. The first one
provides a list of keyboard shortcuts which you will use while working with
Visual Studio 2005. The second appendix is a short primer about relational databases
and covers tables, records, columns, and the concepts behind normalization and joins.
I would suggest the author include one appendix about the naming conventions
that should be followed while working with ASP.NET in the next edition of this
book.
Although this book touches the majority of the topics
involved with ASP.NET 2.0, it failed to provide any coverage about
System.Net.Mail namespace. The authors should provide a nice explanation to the
important classes and methods in a separate chapter as majority of developers
uses this namespace to collect feedback from their users and also to send
automated e-mail or password to them after they sign up on the website.
Further, this book should include a CD-ROM with the relevant
source code files and preferably with softwares such as .NET SDK 2.0 and Visual
Web Developer 2005 Express edition so that learners can use this book as an
instant learning kit without any need to download these from the web. It should
be noted that majority of the readers might not have access to Visual Studio
2005 and hence the CD would be a good companion for them. Authors should also
provide a list of useful reference materials available on the web at the end of
this book.
The author maintains a website
for providing support for this book and readers can download the complete
source code from the website. The author also runs a discussion
forum where readers can post their questions after reading the book. I hope
that this is a great way to keep in touch with the readers worldwide. It would
be great if the author provided the source code for all the examples in Visual
Basic .NET as well on the website so that those readers who hate semicolons can
make use of those. I would suggest the publisher to modify the title of the
book as Programming ASP.NET 2.0 as it will help the buyer to know which version
of ASP.NET has been covered on the book.
Finally, Programming ASP.NET is an ideal reference material
for all those who want to learn and master ASP.NET 2.0 in a shortest possible
time.
About the Book