Rating: 
Summary: An outstanding work...well-written, very helpful
Review: ASP.NET Website Programming - Problem, Design, Solution
by Wrox Press OVERALL ASSESSMENT
I 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 BOOK The 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 was the only one. They also write THEPHILE.COM as if it were to be served on a commercial Web hosting service, which is a nice break from the assumption that we're all running massive data centers completely under our control in our offices.
The authors prominently cite Visual Studio .NET as their tool of choice for coding THEPHILE.COM, but don't neglect the text editor crowd, and present their work in a neutral way that doesn't alienate those choosing to stick to NotePad. This is a big advantage.
A best practices approach to enterprise application design is exhibited throughout the book...and this is something the reader will pick up on, using a consistent method that promotes code reuse, componentization, interchangeability, separation of code from content, and modularity. I particularly liked Marco and Kevin's description of the design of their data access tier for their poll feature. The book is succinct, to the point, and beautifully written. Unlike Wrox titles in years past, the book is a very easy 518 pages (12 chapters, no appendices).
Although written 100% in C#, the code is quite easily transferable to VB.NET, for those interested.
Is it just me...or has Wrox changed the binding on its books? While Wrox titles (at least in my library) have been the first to contract Broken Book Spine Syndrome, the front and back covers seemed more durable, and the book held very well. Which was a much-welcome change, I assure you. And this just isn't because this is a shorter title from Wrox...their entire .NET v1.0 line seems to be better built.
The code download is well-documented, and both Marco and Kevin make themselves very accessible for feedback and help.
WHAT I FEEL NEEDS IMPROVEMENT Although it's obvious in the book community that having documentation for the two major .NET languages in a single title (Visual Basic .NET and C#) is a tall order to fill (and most often doubles the size of a book), the fact that the book is exclusively in C# may detract some of those developers partial to VB.NET from partaking of what is a really good book. Perhaps the good folks at Wrox are considering releasing a VB.NET version?
THEPHIILE.COM at the time of this writing doesn't exist on the Web...which was a minor downer. I was hoping to see the app running full-speed prior to trying the code out for myself, in the vein of the IBuySpy and ColdRooster demo projects.
While it's unconscionable that each and every line of code would be put on paper, the book highlights some of the more notable code constructs.
Rating:
Summary: Best detailed tech book ever read
Review: Don't want to repeat what others have said. I am going to add something new here. 1. Please read this book from cover to cover, even you are not interested in other topics like news, forum and etc. New concepts and techniques are poping up right and left along the reading. Many techniques are introduced and implemented only once in different parts of the book, so read on and get the whole picture. 2. Pay close attention to SitePrincipal and SiteIdentity which I found most difficult to grasp, but once you understand it, they are pretty cool ideas. 3. I have tried very hard to make the most of VS studio to do the job for me instead of doing a lot of manual coding like almost all ASP.NET books are doing. There are so many tips out there to make the best use of the IDE to minimize the amount of manual coding one has to do. Some of my tips: a. You can drag and drop style sheets into your page and save your typing b. Your best layout control is still Table. Don't use grid layout.
c. You can place controls on the designer, so the VS IDE will generate necessary aspx code for you. If you are not satisfied with the way IDE placing the code, you can just cut and paste it into another place. I also read programming asp.net by J Liberty. It's a fine introductory book, you may want to read that one before you read this book.
Rating:
Summary: This book is the best ASP.NET book out there now...
Review: FINALLY!!! A book that tells you how to intelligently put everything together. This book goes through a complete and well thought out architecture of a book and DVD website. I will admit I wish they did a e-com example, but the example they demonstrate was done well enought that it could be applied to an e-com site. The book flows very nicely and it seems as if the authors actually understand what they are typing. It was very refreshing to read a book written by authors that have been programmers in the ASP arena and understand the nitty gritty details that most "non-programming" authors would fail to recognize. If you are wondering how you would go about setting up a good architecture for your website, this book is what you are looking for. A true "must have" for someone that needs to setup a well architected website. Like any technical book, I would strongly recommend you do the sample programming with the book as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but not Beginner
Review: First and foremost, unlike what some here have suggested, this is definitely no-where near a beginner's book. Before reading this you need to know not only C#, but also have a sound familiarity with ASP.NET as well. The book assumes that fully, and don't take that lightly! If you've just read up on C# and come to this book to learn ASP.NET, you are going to be lost before even getting to chapter 3. Read "Beginning ASP.NET Using C#" and quite a bit of the "Professional..." first. This is really a good advanced book on sound advice on designing web applications, just as the title suggests, with some useful examples to boot. IMO, it doesn't rise to the level of 5 stars, but nevertheless it's a useful read for people already familiar with C# and ASP.NET.If you've ever read O'Reilly's "Designing Active Server Pages", then think of this as the ASP.NET equivalent both in coverage and quality.
Rating:
Summary: Great resource with an annoying flaw.
Review: I agree with previous reviews on the excellent content of this book. However, the demo site is hard-coded to run on a local machine installation only. This means the development system must be running SQL Server, IIS, and VS.NET. I would guess that the majority of developers that this title targets are using 2 or more systems running these servers. Adaptation to a remote SQL Server is not a big deal, but there are many instances of hard coded localhost URLs throughout the application. I simply do not want to be mired in the process of configuring the application to run on more realistic platforms. I hope they offer revised code to accomodate this in the future.
Rating:
Summary: Great book despite shortcomings. VB.NET even better.
Review: I agree with the frustrations that Joel shares about the book. It is not for begineers and it assumes you are comfortable with Visual Studio. The authors glance over a lot of simple concepts (setting up the project, folders, keys, namespaces) and instead concetrate their effort on the more important fundamental concepts (developing really useful web applications using three tier design). This decision can frustrate beginers that are starting with ASP.NET and VS.NET, but should be acceptable to more experienced programmers. However, let there be no mistake, despite the shortcommings, this is a great book and there are very few in its class. Almost everyone agrees (p2p.wrox.com), the book has no equal and if you stick with it you will be rewarded. Finally, I have to disagree with your comments about the VB.NET version. I have spent many weeks with the C# version and several days with the VB.NET version, and I can assure you the frustrations you talk about are common to both editions and have nothing to do with translation (even the .snk file location!). Demian and Norbert's translation has answered a lot of the questions I had accummulated and solved a lot of the bugs from the original. This, and the fact that the code is better laid out and makes for more pleasant reading, means I would recommend the VB.NET version over the original. The bottom line, the book is not perfect and but is outstanding where it counts. Stick with it and you will be rewarded.
Rating:
Summary: Helpful in a real life programming way...
Review: I am not usually a big fan of Wrox books, but this book is very good. It gives real life examples which are helpful to any web based programmer. Examples include how to build your own File Manager to cut out FTP completely or just to use when your on the road. They also include a large section on user authentication and site navigation. Another good part of this book is the format. They do not simply start devulging information, but use a real life step by step solution, including the problem, a design to solve the problem, and then pratical code to solve said problem. If your new to ASP.NET this would be a great and very pratical book to pick up, even if just for the great code examples that are available for download on the Wrox FTP site.
Rating:
Summary: Great book with one huge error in C# version
Review: I bought this book some time ago. My printing is November 2002. I like the book, and learned a lot, but in my printing there is at least one glaring error in the usage of the 'using' keyword. On page 159 and at least two other pages it's used similarly to this:
using(DataSet roles = SomeFunctionThatReturnsDataSet())
{
return roles;
}
The implication of the above code is that somehow roles will magically be disposed when no longer needed due to the fact that it was created within a using block. In reality, it is disposed immediately on exit from the using block.
The only reason that the code works is that the DataSet dispose method only releases some remoting related resources, and DataSet does not throw an AlreadyDisposed exception (as it should) when methods are called on it after it has been disposed. If that behavior of DataSet changes in the future, any code that tries to use roles after it is returned from within the using block will fail.
I posted this on a site dedicated to this book but no one seemed very interested.
Rating: 
Summary: A rushed/careless rewrite of what could have been damn good
Review: I can see why the C# version won such acclaim. This book really touches a lot of good topics, and does teach you a lot. However, a) The site and code are FULL of errors (Sickening they released it that way). Example there are comments "Why is country hard coded to spain" Gee .. you shouldn't be asking us that, and You go to My Account, and click on "Sign Out" and poof .. error .. Damn, that is a pretty basic thing to miss. b) Misprints/errors/inconsistencies with the site. Y'know .. it is hard enough to learn something, and then you make it tougher .. damn. c) The site, needs to be downloaded. No CDROM. Damn, 60 bucks for a small book and you can't even give a CDROM? How cheap is that? On the good side, if you have the patience of a saint, and don't mind banging your head a bit on an iron wall, this book does have a lot to teach, .. as long as you are willing to learn as a good student, and challenge everything you read in this book by actually typing it out YOURSELF, rather than copy pasting it. Final Conclusion: Is this book good for you? Depends, if you are ultra patient and are willing to deal with irritating mistakes, then yea this book has a *LOT* to teach. And yea, if you are not a seasoned ASP.NET developer .. stay away .. trust me, stay away. :)
Rating:
Summary: Just one word: AMAZING!!!
Review: I cannot believe the authors are giving away this book! This book is not only clearly written and very informative, it is exceptional! The reason is that it contains a lot of code that is not an example, but it really is a working and full featured site! I'm a long time ASP developers, and some time ago I purchased a news management module and a poll module. They saved me some days of development so I can say they were worth it. But my point is that this book provides these two modules and many more, with many more features than those found in the modules I purchased! Great, great work guys! I strongly suggest you to buy the book, because it explains with lots of details the design and implementation of the code. The design section in particular was very helpful, because it made me think about things that I would have never considered otherwise! To conclude: THIS IS A SUGGESTED READING!!!
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