ASP.Net Website Programming: Problem - Design - Solution

by Kevin Hoffman and Marco Bellinaso

What is this book about? The C# edition of ASP.NET Website Programming Problem-Design-Solution has been phenomenally successful, gaining rave reviews for its unique approach and valuable content. The blend of theory and practice. Now, due to demand from readers, a Visual Basic .NET edition of the book has been produced. This edition will offer the same blend of theory and practice that won so many fans for the C# edition. The book has been completely...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0764543865
• ISBN13: 9780764543869
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Wrox Press
• Length: 576 Pages
• Weight: 1.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 7.3" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Title is totally "hands on" and far more practical than many

I think that the first observation about this book is that it is not what I consider a normal Wrox book, in fact few books I've read both present and structure the content in the same consistent way that each chapter of this book does, making this the most useful book I've read in a long time. This title is totally "hands on" and far more practical than many that are more theory based. The author suggests that you download the code and "get in there" coding as you read the chapters; which is what I did.The approach of taking an example site from conception to deployment may not please all readers as the level of detail may be too much for them (stored procedures and table design). However, if you are looking to buy this book to help you build a real-world, community based ASP site that requires administration, security and advertising to name just a few areas then this book can almost be followed word-for-word to achieve your goal. If the book does go into too much detail for you at the point of reading, then hold on to it because I'm sure it will become a vital reference book at some time in the future.The nice thing about the structure of the book that makes it an easy and enjoyable read, other than the plainly written English, is the consistent approach to each chapter. The front of the book states that every chapter works around the three main issues we come up against time and again in development; Problem, Design and Solution. The Design sections lists the features required to solve the "problem in hand", then each of the sites physical layers are designed based on implementing these features using the correct technology as we move towards coding the Solution.A good foundation is always built upon when solving a defined problem. All solutions are built in a modulised manner, which aids projects with geographically separated development teams, and also eases future maintenance or extensibility. Inheritance plays a large part in the creation of reusable objects in all .NET languages and is used extensively throughout the example web site within server/client controls and the pages themselves to implement security and error trapping. Architecture is considered at the outset, as it should be and the influence of the chosen architecture can be found in most chapters.This book only ever implements the example ASP code in C# (all well written abiding to defined coding standards which isn't always the case in books) and uses other technologies as and when it needs to, these include - SQL Server Transact SQL, XML/XSLT, CSS, IIS administration, Web Services, ADO.Net and the .Net Framework, helping to give the reader a suitable knowledge grounding. In my opinion, it's a shame that code samples or at least downloads aren't provided in more languages. Although if you are a reasonable .NET programmer, you'll understand the C# syntax and the concepts that the book is trying to convey. The book doesn't over use code samples to pad it's size out, in fact it

The book is not good. It is Excellent!

I was looking for a book to get into ASP.Net development with C# and my primary goal was to fully utilize the features of .Net environment so that I could write reusable and easily updateable code with the least amount of hassle if there are changes later on in the process. MSDN is great, but it is not always the best way to learn how things are put together in a synthetic whole and how things work in practice. I can't tell you how glad I am to have chanced upon this one:1) The concepts are crystal clear (which is an indication of how clear the concepts are in the authors' minds). They do an excellent job in giving a solid foundation about the general design considerations in few pages. The time one would save if one read the general discussion alone would be worth the book's price.2) Authors omit any obvious explanations (which made the book size very reasonable for such great content), yet don't fail to mention any crucial implementation decision along with the underlying rationale. 3) The code is very clean. (You would not believe how much bad code is out there in programming books.)4) They formulate their sentences with great care. The language, far from being an obstacle, actually becomes a great tool in understanding more difficult topics.5) Provides a very useful context for msdn help so that when you read a particular topic, you know how to use it once you learn it.If you are a veteran programming book reader, you would know how costly (both $wise and even more importantly, in terms of wasted time and unnecessary frustration) badly written books can be. This book deserves a full rating for both its great content and clear presentation. I hope this sets the standard for all programming books!

A must for Web developers

I waited for a book like this for a long time.There are currently tons of books that explain how to develop a website with a certain language or a framework - they often also provide large reference tables for classes and methods. Good books, but they don't show how to use the presented techniques in real-world projects. And here it is where this book enters the scene and finds its place.This book guides the reader along the development of a complete web site, from design to deployment. Anyone who has ever worked on a website built using a server-side language has probably faced the same problems: how to develop the common modules required in almost any site, such as news, forum or accounts management. This books teaches just this: how to build these common modules with ASP.NET and C#, and how to plug them into your own site.Each chapter is divided in three sections, which excellently mix theory and practice without making the reading boring or difficult: problem - design - solution. In the "Problem" section the authors present the problem that the module will solve. "Design" describes the design choices and the reasons behind them, and the last section "Solution" presents the code for the actual implementation of the module. After introducing the general design of a modern site (based on the widely used 3-tiers architecture), the modules used by most dynamic sites are described: there are modules to manage news, advertisement banners, polls, mailing lists, forum, accounts, and there is even a complete web-based file manager!Particular attention is devoted to users management and the authentication/authorization process. I've found very useful also the chapter about the user interface design, which explains how to build customizable pages with the help of CSS, XML and XSLT. The only prerequisite for reading this book is a basic understanding of C# and ASP.NET (this book is not for absolute beginners in fact): all the rest, especially the advanced topics, are explained in good depth. However, you'll find this book quite difficult if you have no previous experience with ASP.NET (for example, if you don't know what is codebehind, server controls, postback events etc.).The quality of the presented techniques makes this book a *great* guide, and you'll find yourself referencing to it often, during the development of a web site. The code examples are also great - they are actually complete and working modules that you can reuse in real projects in almost no time. Some of them could even compete with commercial software!Alberto Falossi (from his review on Visual Basic Journal Italy - Jul/Aug 02 issue)

A Great, Great Book!

If you are looking to develop a website in ASP.NET, using C#, and a SQL Server database, then this book is for you. The authors build a website from beginning to end, taking into account so many things: coding standards, tier design, modular development, security, deployment, and maintenance, to name just a few areas. In addition, they target the situation that a lot of people will be in, which is in using a third-party hosting company to host their website. This book was tailor-made for my project.I didn't need several chapters that dealt with news management, polls, forums, advertising, and mailing lists, as my project didn't require those things. Still, for me, the book was well worth getting for everything else it contained.All in all, I found this to be unique among computer books. It takes you through the design and development of a real-world project throughout the whole book, step by step, and when you are done, you have a solid understanding of the entire ASP.NET website development process.Worth every bit of the money.

An outstanding work...well-written, very helpful

ASP.NET Website Programming - Problem, Design, Solution by Wrox Press OVERALL ASSESSMENTI had the pleasure of reading through this book over the course of a week, and I really let it sink it. I was very impressed with this work. This is a great book that the intermediate-to-advanced .NET developer should get their hands on. It's very well thought-out and the lessons are plainly stated, and easy to follow. Authors Marco Bellinaso and Kevin Hoffmann describe a fictional content-based site that provides information for DVD and book enthusiasts, THEPHILE.COM. The book is essentially a long-form case study, diving into the architecture, infrastructure, and engineering behind an online publishing system. The book takes a very honest approach and enforces a disciplined, structured methodology to writing an extremely practical (and cool!) n-tier Web app. The book also dives briefly into extending a few of THEPHILE.COM's various applications as desktop applications, which is a nice addition to make for a more well-rounded title. You'll need a solid understanding of the .NET Framework, specifically ASP.NET, C#, and ADO.NET if you're to get the most out of this book, as it's definitely not for beginners. But it's a no-nonsense, well-prepared look at leveraging .NET Web technologies to your advantage. There have been several books written to date profiling the design of an enterprise-level solution, like Sams' excellent "Building e-Commerce Sites with the .NET Framework." To cater to the masses, these books present a hypothetical business model, usually based around an e-commerce framework, and feature applications like shopping carts, inventory management utilities, etc. There really haven't been a whole lot of title that deal with simply-yet-prolific Web features like mass e-mail list managers, advertising engines, user polls, and article management - apps that are common to high-traffic Web sites. On a personal level, I'm in charge of running several news-oriented Web sites, so on a personal level this book had more direct appeal to me, demonstrating how one could implement .NET technologies in efficiently managing content and interactives.This is a very worthwhile buy (although Wrox apparently doesn't differentiate book length with book price, it being the typical US$59.95), and a great addition to your library. You'll read this one more than once for inspiration on your own projects.WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THE BOOKThe approach to designing the app is very intuitive - from promoting code reuse, object inheritance, modular component design in XML files, intelligent administration files, and much more. The end result is a big app that performs great and is largely self-sustaining. The authors were very honest. This is most notable in their revelation that they didn't care much for the dragging-and-dropping DataAdapters within Visual Studio .NET, which leads to cumbersome code and a loss of control, preferring to code it themselves. I thought I wa