Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Reference on ASP.NET Performance
Review: APress consistently puts out good books, but even by their high standards this book really stands out. The topics are presented in a very readable, very useful way. Jeffrey Hasan is a consistently good technical writer and speaker. I have found his articles in MSDN Magazine and particularly asp.NET Pro magazine to be very useful, and always very readable. (That's partly why I ended up buying this book).There is a lot of detail here, but I never felt overwhelmed by it. At first glance, some of the topics in this book do not appear to be new (such as caching). But this is misleading, because the book provides new and interesting information. For example, I had never seen a good discussion and example of caching with VaryByControl. This book has it, and shows me why I should be implementing it in my solutions. Other highlights of this book include an excellent discussion of the Microsoft ACT testing tool, and the most detailed discussion of session state and caching I've read. Really useful stuff. The topic of this book is "performance", and every chapter contributes to this goal. Many books on the market are good in parts, but they often don't hold together well. This book from start to finish has a consistent tone, and a natural progression of topics that feels well organized, and is very effective at relating the information. By the end of the book I genuinely felt that I had a new level of insight into how to write my ASP.NET apps with performance in mind. No one book can give you all the information you need. But this book stands out as one of the top 5 reference books I keep on my bookshelf (along with Ingo Rammer's .NET Remoting Book, and Jeffrey Richter's Applied .NET Programming). This book should be required reading on ASP.NET Performance!
Rating: 
Summary: A welcome addition to the programmer¿s bookshelf
Review: Book Name: Performance Turning and Optimizing ASP.NET Applications
Authors: Mr. Jeffrey Hassan and Mr. Kenneth Tu
Publisher: APress The Review Chapter 1: The book starts with basics about performance turning such as Throughput, "Response Time" and "Request bytes out total". This chapter also provides introduction to Windows performance utility and Microsoft Application Center Test utility. Chapter 2: This chapter provides thousand feet overview of ASP.NET. This chapter also discusses the performance related issues with Viewstate and how to measure that using the inbuilt ASP.NET tracing feature. This chapter covers the performance impacts of encoding and encrypting the Viewstate using the EnableViewStateMac attribute of the Page directive. This chapter also provides some vital information about ASP.NET configuration files and how to add app level configuration settings that is custom configuration settings (Very few books address this option.) One cool tip that really like about this chapter is that, "Persisting view state across multiple pages (Page No 37)". Chapter 3: This chapter starts with an overview of ADO.NET and teaches how we can improve performance of our application by turning the data access code. This chapter explains the relationship between DataSet's and XML. How the validate a DataSet with an XSD and Typed DataSet. Chapter 4: This chapter is a well-written chapter that provides ample amount of information about ASP.NET Session store and compares performance impacts of each of these stores. This chapter not only talks about how to read custom information from the web.config files, this chapter also shows the how to read it in the code (Very cool). Finally this chapter talks about "Choosing the right ASP.NET session store option." Chapter 5: This is a very nice chapter that talks about all the aspects of caching including output and data. I wish the authors covered the Shared attribute. One real good thing about this chapter is that, it goes above and beyond the ASP.NET web caching and talks about how to use ISA server for ASP.NET caching (including forward caching and reverse caching) Chapter 6: This is a typical web services chapter that teaches how to write web services using ASP.NET engine (including all the web services and web method related CLR attributes). The later part of the chapter covers the SOAP exceptions and how to raise one, calling web services with asynchronously using server-side and client-side web services behaviors, web services security and web services Vs Remoting. Finally this chapter talks about "Optimizing web services design" with 9 points. Chapter 7: This is a very nice chapter that covers all aspects of stress testing and monitoring ASP.NET applications including, · Concepts behind stress testing including latency, throughput and utilization
· Performance testing approaches such as load/stress testing, scalability and transaction cost analysis
· Best practices for stress testing
· Using the ACT tool.
Chapter 8: This chapter talks about the debugging and tracing features of ASP.NET applications. This includes types of execution, debugging, tracing, event logging and performance counters. This book is a welcome addition to the programmer's bookshelf. The only thing that is missing from this book is that, this book had covered hardcore tools such as "Rational Quentify", "Intel's .NET Performance" tools, that would have been a helpful addition.
Rating:
Summary: A first-rate ASP.NET book
Review: Finally, an informative, concise ASP.NET book that addresses the needs of more advanced developers! The authors clearly recognize that we readers don't want to have the same basic concepts rehashed to us over and over again. This book picks selected topics and drills into them in great detail - and the code actually works! The book's goal is to help you build "high performance" ASP.NET applications, and it does not disappoint. It covers different aspects that contribute to performance, such as caching, session state, and data access, and shows you how to use these technologies in the best way. There is more detail here than I have seen elsewhere, and the code by and large avoids using unrealistic, overly simple examples that in the end don't really show you how to solve a real-world problem (no "Hello, Worlds" here thankfully). For example, in the chapter on session state management, they show graphs comparing each mode and show how different stress conditions determine which mode is ideal. And the chapter on caching is the most complete I have seen. They cover each option in great detail with clear code examples. Code you can actually use. The authors provide a great discussion on stress testing and tuning ASP.NET applications. IF YOU BUY THIS BOOK FOR JUST ONE REASON, BUY IT FOR THIS: it is the ONLY book on the market that I know of which discusses Microsoft Application Center Test (ACT) in detail. The authors show you how to set up tests and interpret the results. They even throw in a few well-placed equations for crunching the test numbers. They talk about the ACT object model (something I can't find in any other book) and show you how to script out your tests. Wow. The book also has a good chapter on XML Web services. This chapter contains a great section on how to call Web methods from client-side code - very different! Throughout, the book is loaded with lots of good code. And yes, the code is in VB.NET, which some C# developers may not like. But it's just not a big deal. VB.NET code is easy to understand and C# developers will get just as much out of this book as will VB.NET developers. The concepts are just as important as the code in this book. I give this book high marks because it knows its audience, and delivers what that audience wants to know in a concise, but detailed 360 pages. (I have a low opinion of thick computer books that manage to say very little in 1000+ pages). Buy this book if you are ready to move beyond beginning ASP.NET and want a detailed discussion on how to develop your ASP.NET applications at the next level.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent ASP.NET Performance Book
Review: Hasan and Tu take the reader on a pragmatic, well written, and clear journey to building high performing, secure and efficient web sites using ASP.NET. No more guessing, no more scrambling to find a solution under pressure. Armed with this book the developer can finally take a proactive design and development approach to building high performance sites. They not only cover the presentation layer but the business and data access tiers as well.
My copy of this book takes its position next to Code Complete as the "go to" book for winning technical discussions, influencing decisions and for building scalable n-tier sites.
I highly recommend this book for any intermediate to expert ASP.NET developer and I can't wait for their next book!
Rating:
Summary: An essential guide for ASP.NET development
Review: Hasan and Tu take the reader on a pragmatic, well written, and clear journey to building high performing, secure and efficient web sites using ASP.NET. No more guessing, no more scrambling to find a solution under pressure. Armed with this book the developer can finally take a proactive design and development approach to building high performance sites. They not only cover the presentation layer but the business and data access tiers as well.
My copy of this book takes its position next to Code Complete as the "go to" book for winning technical discussions, influencing decisions and for building scalable n-tier sites.
I highly recommend this book for any intermediate to expert ASP.NET developer and I can't wait for their next book!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent ASP.NET Performance Book
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book! It was easy to read and was filled with good advice regarding ASP.NET application performance. My favorite topics included using session state management, writing optimized data access, understanding viewstate and even using Microsoft's ACT! Most of all, the authors devoted a solid chapter on Stress Testing and Monitoring Performance. I found this to be the most important chapter because it covered the concepts behind analyzing and measuring the performance of your site. This chapter's concepts apply to all other topics in the book. This book is a must have for ASP.NET developers!
Rating:
Summary: Two Thumbs Up
Review: If you have some experience developing ASP.NET applications, then you will want to read this book! You don't have to be a super user, you just need to know the basics on how to create an ASP.NET application. Don't get me wrong, this book is also a must read for us developers who have been creating ASP.NET applications for a while too. Chapter 1, Introducing Performance Tuning and Optimization was very well written and describes the basics of this topic. Chapter 2, Introducing ASP.NET Applications was a little basic for me, but you don't want to skip reading it. I found some very helpful explanations about the reasons for doing things the recommended way that no other author has mentioned. Most books tell you to do it a certain way, but never indicate why. Chapter 3, Writing Optimized Data Access Code, also had some very helpful tips and explanations. My favorite chapters by far were Chapters 4 (Optimizing Application and Session State Management), 5 (Caching ASP.NET Applications)and 7(Stress Testing and Monitoring ASP.NET Applications). I can't say enough about these chapters. They are a must read for any developer!! The only bad thing I can say is, I wish they would have developed Chapter 7 even more. Or, maybe we can entice them to write a whole book on ACT, a feature that is not mentioned in any other book I have read, and I read a lot. Chapter 6, Writing Optimized Web Services, was also a great chapter, but it's not one that interests me at this time because I do not have a use for it in my current developing position. However, if you do have a use for Web Services, this is a must read chapter as it gives a great example and shows how users consume it. I highly recommend this book to any and all developers, even if you are just starting out with ASP.NET. It's a book you will want to keep for referencing during your ASP.NET development.
Rating:
Summary: Good developers will buy this book. Great ones will use it!
Review: Okay, right from the start: this book is a great reference for professional developers who are looking for a collection of practical advice, important development/deployment factors to consider, and best practices when working on an ASP.NET solution. As a developer I appreciate the well-organized references. The information is to-the-point, and they truly made this book for the experienced developer by providing the answers in a professional, non-condesending way. I like the way they weigh the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches, and how they summarize what developers should consider during every step of the development life cycle. You really get a sense that Hasan and Tu have done their homework through actual hard work and experience, and not just regurgitated what someone else has published. My favorite chapters were Chapters 3, 5 and 6, particularly as a software consultant working to master ASP.NET as quickly as possible. I have 5 other, thicker books on ASP.NET sprawled acrosss my apartment, and yet this book is the one I look for whenever I have a question. I usually find what I am looking for (or on a couple occassions, I found what I was _supposed_ to look for!). Again, like I said, the information is concise, accurate, and adaptable. While I haven't yet had the resources to devote to using the MS Application Center Test (ACT) tool, Chapters 7 and 8 provide an extensive, step-by-step guide. The text is full of well-thought out, reasonable recommendations on how to optimize performance. They provide good example code that is easy to follow and adapt to my own solutions. So bottom line: this is a great reference for developers looking to take their code to the next level, who are not content with simply providing a working solution -- for those who want to provide the best solution. The recommendations and examples that are covered in this book will help you achieve that.
Rating:
Summary: This book is more than performance tuning and optimization
Review: The authors of this book have done an incredible job of highlighting essential pieces involved in writing database driven web-based business applications. Clearly, the book distills hard-won real life practical experiences of the authors. Not only does it present ready-to-use "code snippet fishes" that you can eat right away but also teaches you how to fish by using Visual Studio.NET "fishing tools". In short, you will find everything you would need to build optimized ASP.NET business applications in this book without having to wade through volumes of reference material. Chapter 2 presents a great overview of the .NET presentation layer. Particularly, I like the pros and cons of using view state. The discussion on "web.config" file settings is also very helpful. Chapter 3 brings out the most frequently used data access paradigms within .NET applications and their appropriate usage based on the problem context. In summary, this book is a must have for all serious ASP.NET application developers who wants to take advantage of the authors practical experience in building real applications.
Rating: 
Summary: Documentation Ripoff
Review: This book has way too much information that is already available from the documentation help files or online. I would preferred to see real world examples of when caching was implemented and how they tackled real problems. The sample code snippets they provide are basic knowledge and are available in the documentation. This book should be called "Asp.Net and Ado tutorial with a shallow chapter on asp.net caching."
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