PRObooks
Professional ASP.NET
Professional ASP.NET is one of the most comprehensive texts about ASP.NET on the market today. The book covers everything, including data management using ADO.NET, security, server controls, Web Services, XML, and even mobile controls for portable, wireless, Internet-enabled platforms. It s not what I would call an exhaustive exploration of these issues, but, given that the book is based on the .NET Beta 2 framework, it is packed with an impressive amount of detail. The book assumes no prior ASP development experience and does not delve into comparisons of old and new code. Most code samples are in VB .NET code, occasionally accompanied by a C# translation, and rarely in JScript .NET syntax.
Few books are perfect, though, and Professional ASP.NET is no exception. Because the book is a compilation of writing by multiple authors, it has annoyingly redundant remarks and topic discussions. The book also provides merely superficial coverage of COM+, database transactions, and XSLT, and is entirely void of any message queuing examples. Admittedly, these topics can be books unto themselves. But, given the level of detail the book dedicates to other topics, a few more pages discussing these subjects would have captured nearly everything ASP.NET developers might face. Even without this coverage, however, all ASP.NET developers should strongly consider having Professional ASP.NET on their bookshelves.
Mike Riley
Professional ASP.NET by Richard Anderson, Brian Francis, Alex Homer, Rob Howard, Dave Sussman, and Karli Watson, Wrox Press, http://www.wrox.com.
Rating:
ISBN: 1-861004-88-5
Cover Price: US$59.99
(1,317 pages)
