Sebastopol, CA--Jesse Liberty is unequivocal when describing the impact of ASP.NET, the next generation of Active Server Pages from Microsoft. "We believe that ASP.NET is the single most important technology to come out of Microsoft since Windows 3.1, and will revolutionize the efficiency with which programmers build applications for the Web." Liberty and coauthor Dan Hurwitz have just published Programming ASP.NET (O'Reilly, US $49.95). "When we finally got our hands on ASP.NET, it so exceeded even our imagined ideal development environment, we instantly committed ourselves to ASP.NET. We're not going back, and you can't make us."
As the authors note in the book's preface, "The difficulty in ASP.NET is only that it is so complete and flexible that there are many pieces that must be woven together to build a robust, scalable, and efficient application." Over two million programmers worldwide are developing with today's versions of ASP technology, hands-down the most successful web development tool. ASP.NET uses the full power of compiled .NET languages like VB .NET and C#, rather than the interpreted script such as VBScript, resulting in a significant performance boost. ASP.NET also has a new Rapid Application Development (RAD) environment, which is designed to reduce the time needed to create web interfaces.
Explains Liberty, "Programming ASP.NET is targeted at programmers who are currently building web applications with ASP or other tools, and other programmers who want to make the transition to building web applications. While Programming ASP.NET assumes you are already familiar with either C# or VB .NET, an experienced programmer should be able to read this book without trouble." Coding examples are presented in both languages, and are based on the released code, not on the beta version--an especially important feature given the recent release of Visual Studio .NET.
This book's concise treatment of ASP.NET basics and greater focus on applications development targets experienced programmers and web developers who want to quickly create ASP.NET applications. Programming ASP.NET draws not only on the decades of programming experience both authors possess, but also on the experiences of alpha and beta testers to cover the topics most relevant--and problems most troublesome--to web developers. The many short examples, rather than a single, unmanageably large application, allow the widest range of constructs, both valid and invalid.
Programming ASP.NET includes a detailed tutorial on Web Forms, which, in conjunction with Visual Studio .NET, allows you to apply Rapid Application Development techniques (including drag-and-drop control placement) to web development. The book includes extensive coverage of web server controls, HTML server controls, and custom controls, as well as data access issues, such as using list-bound controls, accessing data using the ADO.NET object model, and updating data with or without transaction support. Programming ASP.NET also discusses such advanced topics as caching and performance, security, and configuration and deployment.
If you use C# and Visual Basic .NET, Programming ASP.NET will teach you everything you need to know to write web applications and web services. Concludes Liberty, "It was our goal in writing this book not to duplicate the documentation, which is excellent, but rather to provide a map and a guide through the material, focusing on those aspects of ASP.NET that are critical to building real-world applications."
Online Resources:
Programming ASP.NET
By Jesse Liberty, Dan Hurwitz
0-596-00171-1, Order Number: 1711
960 pages, $49.95 US, $74.95 CA
order@oreilly.com
1-800-998-9938; 1-707-827-7000
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