Book Review : Teach Yourself
ASP.NET in 21 Days
by Chris Payne
Published 11/03/01
About this Book
This book is designed for someone
with little (or no) knowledge of ASP.NET and over a 23 day period (yes, 23,
either someone can't do math or they just couldn't fit it into 21) informs you
of the knowledge you need to get a pretty firm foothold in the world of
ASP.NET.
For a beginner
This book is designed for a
beginner in ASP.NET, it starts off with the basics of what server-side
programming is and all that and how to install the .NET Framework Beta 2
(which is included on the CD). Although it seems to go a bit fast into
ASP.NET, I already knew a bit about ASP.NET so it was fine, but for a very new
person, this jolt may be on the wrong track. However after the first two days
the reader should get the hang of it.
On Day 4 it has a bit about using
objects in C# with VB.NET. I didn't quite see the point of this chapter. It
was either to confuse the reader or they labeled it 'Day 4' by mistake. To go
with that, most of the chapter was in VB.NET anyway, but it was a quick and
dirty guide to the exceedingly simple bits of C#.
It then introduces you to the
world of a lot of the web form objects, the reference isn't totally complete
on how to use them and left you in the short end in some cases, eg. It didn't
even explain what asp:listitem was and there was no explanation ANYWHERE!
From Beginner to Intermediate
It then goes into things about
Data. These days were very complex and although it gave you what you needed to
produce the examples there, it didn't give you that much.
It only focused in OleDb (which I guess is OK for the beginner, don't want to
overwhelm then with SQL Server), the explanation of the objects was good, but
again a detailed look at the properties, methods and examples of it being used
would have been great, there was an appendix at the back with the methods and
properties of most of the objects talked about, but it wasn't as good as it
could have been.
After a few days on data, a bit on
those small things (caching, XML etc.) we get to Web Services. I wanted to
know a lot about web services because I wanted to know how powerful they were
and how to consume them.
I think it provided a very good
look at Web Services (from my standpoint because I had already learnt a lot
about them from that Episode of the .NET show and some other sources), but
again - is it enough for the total beginner - yes.
It had some good information on
things like - (I won't bore you with the details of these)
-
Configuring and Deploying
ASP.NET Applications
-
Debugging (One of the deadly
sins)
-
Security (very good, as it looks
at the new FSO earlier on)
-
Mobile Applications (hmm, not
exactly what I expected but good if you want to create mobile applications)
It even has got a full application
that you build along the way with each week - An Online Bank.
On Day 22 you create another full app - An Online Shop.
Some other Stuff
I have always enjoyed books in the
Teach Yourself _______ in 21 Days series and books from Sams and this one is no
different. I'm already recommending it (and lending it) to people who are just
starting in the world of server-side development.
