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Summary: An Introduction to Database-Driven Web Sites
Review: As Web sites grow larger and more complex, developers quickly tire of hand-crafting (and later maintaining) new Web pages for each new item or topic. Instead, they want to store their information in a database that the Web server uses to create Web pages on the fly, and that Web visitors use to search, sort, sift, and select information. In short, these developers want to create database-driven Web sites.If you're in this position and have (or can get) a Microsoft Web server, this is the book for you. It provides clear background and well-explained examples for all the technology you need to produce database-driven Web sites on your own. This includes ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) and Active Server Pages (ASP) -- two topics the book assumes you know nothing about -- plus selected information on Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript), HTML, JavaScript, and Microsoft Access. All the examples use Microsoft Access databases simply because this is the database most people already have. As a bonus, two chapters on eXtensible Markup Language (XML) show how to use this exciting and emerging technology on both the browser and the Web server. If you need to create a large and complex e-commerce site, you'll need more information than this book provides. But if you're looking for a practical book that explains all the technologies you need to get started with database-driven Web sites, this book will serve you very well.
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Summary: Outstanding, but not for the novice programmer
Review: Great book for someone with some previous programming experience. Very refreshing to find a book that doesn't start at the absolute lowest level of knowledge. But it is not too overly technical either where you go cross-eyed trying to plow through it. A very *practical* guide for creating real-world applications.
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Summary: Outstanding, but not for the novice programmer
Review: Great book for someone with some previous programming experience. Very refreshing to find a book that doesn't start at the absolute lowest level of knowledge. But it is not too overly technical either where you go cross-eyed trying to plow through it. A very *practical* guide for creating real-world applications.
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Summary: formula for starving to death (microsoft only)
Review: I guess you can not copyright a title. However you would think that they would have to have some truth in advertising. I do not think they are purposely lying. They are just not aware of a true host environment. The person that wrote this book (Jim Buyens) can make fancy toys but has no concept of what a website is or can do. First of all the company he has chosen to host his site has no concepts of languages or environments. Take the challenge try to telnet to them (eeeeck) no way.
Ask about a shell account they will say, "Shell what?" Try words like Apache or Netscape. The bulk of web functionality is perl. However they have two paragraphs devoted to the language and its capabilities. The internet back bone runs on Sun O.S. Ask them what that is. O.K. how about UNIX/Linux. Any commercial operating environment used by telephone companies or fortune 500's or just commercial. One good thing about this book is it helped me to explain to the ISP how to make perl scripts work on their site. Bottom line it is best to learn how to build websites before this book misleads you.
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Summary: Should start slower, reference material should be separated
Review: I really loved chapter 1. Chapters 2 and 3 had way too much reference material without opportunity to use it. I was trying to memorize too much detail. Many things were mentioned with the idea they would be elaborated on later. They could've been saved for later. I'm only on Chapter 4 but I am really struggling to keep going and I have read many books like this cover to cover. Because I do not do development in my current role this is a very challenging book for me. I look forward to getting to later chapters but it is rough going. I like that examples are Access based, not SQL server-based.
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Summary: Should start slower, reference material should be separated
Review: I really loved chapter 1. Chapters 2 and 3 had way too much reference material without opportunity to use it. I was trying to memorize too much detail. Many things were mentioned with the idea they would be elaborated on later. They could've been saved for later. I'm only on Chapter 4 but I am really struggling to keep going and I have read many books like this cover to cover. Because I do not do development in my current role this is a very challenging book for me. I look forward to getting to later chapters but it is rough going. I like that examples are Access based, not SQL server-based.
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Summary: Misleading title
Review: I was a little mislead with the title. I was expecting a help with a web-oriented database design. I was looking for info on secure design, user management, multi-language support, database clusters, etc... But it does not. Actually it only talks about databases in 2-3 chapters and those are on a real basic level (create tables in Access en simple SELECT statements).
All the other stuff is the use of visual studio, Visual Basic, how to drop components, etc. I do NOT recommend this book to any one with some programming expercience. If you know a little VB, made basic ASP(.NET) pages and played around with Access a few times then this book will not teach you anything new. You will be more with this book: Microsoft Press book "ASP.NET programming with Visual C#.NET", ISBN: 0735619352. All my collegues (8) just loved it. How ever if you have no to very little programming experience, new to dynamic webpages and still in the learning curve of (basic) database use. I would recommend this book. --Wout Web experience
* ASP 1.5 year
* ASP.NET 3 months.
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Summary: Great Starting Point
Review: If you have never done any ADO, or ADO with ASP, this book is a great start. I don't come from a relational back-ground at all, I come from a Lotus Notes Development background - and I found this a good entry point... so with this in mind, I think the book would be good for those who have some development skills, but haven't really toyed with ADO and ASP at an Enterprise level. I am a strong advocate of the "Build one solid enterprise project example, chapter by chapter". I believe this is the most effective style to actually help you become a true enterprise developer - none of usual cope snippets (which is alright if that is what you are looking for). The book covers basic Database designs and concepts; Accessing databases with ADO and ODBC; accessing Tables and Records with ADO, Server-side scripting; performing keyword searches; updating tables from a web page; performing text queries etc etc... All in the one useful example / project. Jim's style of writing is mature and educated to point where you feel comfortable with a technology you may have no idea about. Irrespective of technical knowledge, I think you will feel comfortable with this book because of Jim's style. The book is a gem... the only thing that bites me, is that the spine of book is poorly constructed, the glue in the spine gave way and half the pages feel out! Ha! So I am onto my second book and it doing the same thing... which is shame, because it would make a great reference book.
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Summary: General introducting to web
Review: It is a general discussion on setting up a web but very little on the web database programming.
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Summary: It truely works
Review: Most other viewers already give this title a 5 star rating that I totally agree. I want to add a couple points.
1. It's truly a step-by-step guide. If you follow it, you will have a working website with a database behind. 2. All examples truly work, which doesn't happen too often to many other books. In a matter of hours, I almost got all examples functional. That doesn't mean everyone wants or should use the book in this way. I was in a rush to find a textbook for my class and wanted to see if the code does what it claimed to do. 3. The prerequisites of this book is relatively shallow which is good for beginners--basic relational database knowledge, basic VB programming skills, and know how to get around in IIS. 4. The last point I want to make is the author is very responsive and helpful. I was stuck on one example in Ch12 to get the e-mail notification work. I tried my luck by sending a message to the author. He did reply with a fix and it worked within 48 hours! Highly recommended!
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