Rating: 
Summary: Need to know ASP? Get this book.
Review: Obsolete??? Hardly. As I write this review, new Web page technologies are being matured: jsp, php, chm (yech). New models are being matured: Servlets, STRUTS, .NET. Classical ASP 3.0 is still quick, fast and necessary for small to medium businesses, even enterprise-level webpages. There's no better book to learn all the standards, applications, basics, and advanced capabilities of ASP than THIS book.I love Wrox. I started with their Beginning ASP 2.0 book (how I learned). This book, a bit more advanced but in the beginning level, is still all you need to get things going from single tiered applications to multi-tiered, database driven apps. It goes into COM objects and other MS Services like Index. Really a one-stop book. With this book and Google you have all the reference you need. Note: ASP 3.0 is in no way, shape, or form similar to ASP.net. A small, tiny complaint about this book is that it can be a bit wordy...just a tad. And the index in the back could use a bit more improvement. The info's still in there.
Rating:
Summary: The BEST book for classical ASP
Review: Obsolete??? Hardly. As I write this review, new Web page technologies are being matured: jsp, php, chm (yech). New models are being matured: Servlets, STRUTS, .NET. Classical ASP 3.0 is still quick, fast and necessary for small to medium businesses, even enterprise-level webpages. There's no better book to learn all the standards, applications, basics, and advanced capabilities of ASP than THIS book. I love Wrox. I started with their Beginning ASP 2.0 book (how I learned). This book, a bit more advanced but in the beginning level, is still all you need to get things going from single tiered applications to multi-tiered, database driven apps. It goes into COM objects and other MS Services like Index. Really a one-stop book. With this book and Google you have all the reference you need. Note: ASP 3.0 is in no way, shape, or form similar to ASP.net. A small, tiny complaint about this book is that it can be a bit wordy...just a tad. And the index in the back could use a bit more improvement. The info's still in there.
Rating: 
Summary: For inter./adv. web developers using Microsoft
Review: Professional Active Server Pages 3.0, by Alex Homer, is
a book on developing web applications using Active
Server Pages 3.0. This book goes in depth into
developing web applications with discussions and
examples on advanced topics such as, CDO/Microsoft
Exchange Server, ADO/Microsoft SQL Server, and
ADSI/Active Directory. Homer presents the reader with a
wealth of information on advanced enterprise level
topics based on Microsoft technologies. This book is
excellent for intermediate/advanced users who wish to
learn about Active Server Pages using Microsoft
technologies, however due to the fact Homer does not
goes in depth with fundamentals of programming Visual
Basic Script, this book should not be recommended to
novice developers. Throughout the book, Homer discusses the importance of
COM/COM+ and what that technology can do for your web
application. He writes examples of a COM+ component in
Visual Basic and shows the user how to register/load
the component into memory along with utilizing the
functionality of them in an Active Server Page. Homer
further explores the features of Windows 2000 by
introducing the features of Active Directory and
explaining/demonstrating how ADSI can connect an Active
Server Page to the Active Directory. The book goes into
further detail on enterprise level topics by discussing
how CDO interfaces with Microsoft Exchange Server.
Using CDO, a developer can access all of users Exchange
account information including mail, contacts, calendar,
etc. The book ends with performance and security issues
for web applications running on a Windows 2000 Server
and how an administrator should configure a Windows
2000 Server for maximum performance and security. The software/technologies the book uses are based on
products/technologies developed by Microsoft. Since
Active Server Pages is a Microsoft technology, it would
be reasonable to use only Microsoft
products/technologies. However, in the real world, many
businesses have heterogeneous environments with Oracle
database servers and JavaScript web developers. The
fact that this book only exposes the reader to vendor-
specific technologies could be a down fall, however
creates a centralized focus for the reader. This book covers a wide spectrum of advanced knowledge
with Active Server Pages, however is completely based
around Microsoft technologies. Several other authors
composed this book, which helps the reader get a
dynamic flavor of knowledge from chapter to chapter as
one can see. Any intermediate/advanced web developer,
interested in enterprise web application development,
should purchase a copy of this book for reference
purposes.
Rating:
Summary: For inter./adv. web developers using Microsoft technologies
Review: Professional Active Server Pages 3.0, by Alex Homer, is a book on developing web applications using Active Server Pages 3.0. This book goes in depth into developing web applications with discussions and examples on advanced topics such as, CDO/Microsoft Exchange Server, ADO/Microsoft SQL Server, and ADSI/Active Directory. Homer presents the reader with a wealth of information on advanced enterprise level topics based on Microsoft technologies. This book is excellent for intermediate/advanced users who wish to learn about Active Server Pages using Microsoft technologies, however due to the fact Homer does not goes in depth with fundamentals of programming Visual Basic Script, this book should not be recommended to novice developers. Throughout the book, Homer discusses the importance of COM/COM+ and what that technology can do for your web application. He writes examples of a COM+ component in Visual Basic and shows the user how to register/load the component into memory along with utilizing the functionality of them in an Active Server Page. Homer further explores the features of Windows 2000 by introducing the features of Active Directory and explaining/demonstrating how ADSI can connect an Active Server Page to the Active Directory. The book goes into further detail on enterprise level topics by discussing how CDO interfaces with Microsoft Exchange Server. Using CDO, a developer can access all of users Exchange account information including mail, contacts, calendar, etc. The book ends with performance and security issues for web applications running on a Windows 2000 Server and how an administrator should configure a Windows 2000 Server for maximum performance and security. The software/technologies the book uses are based on products/technologies developed by Microsoft. Since Active Server Pages is a Microsoft technology, it would be reasonable to use only Microsoft products/technologies. However, in the real world, many businesses have heterogeneous environments with Oracle database servers and JavaScript web developers. The fact that this book only exposes the reader to vendor-specific technologies could be a down fall, however creates a centralized focus for the reader. This book covers a wide spectrum of advanced knowledge with Active Server Pages, however is completely based around Microsoft technologies. Several other authors composed this book, which helps the reader get a dynamic flavor of knowledge from chapter to chapter. Any intermediate/advanced web developer, interested in enterprise web application development, should purchase a copy of this book for reference purposes.
Rating:
Summary: Not all sample code was tested
Review: The book is very useful, however not all code was tested by authors. I met even compile time errors. It is hard to make some samples to work. Headings in sample asps sometimes do not match their contents. The comments to samples must be added as readme for each chapter.
Rating:
Summary: Intermediate ASP Programer Bible is Here.
Review: The title of this review speak for itself. I've barely look at the few examples and not even all the advance or complicated stuffs and I've been able to make a decent ASP site. A lot of this book oviously deal with the ASP and Database integration. But then again, that's what these advance scripts are for, Database Integration. Anyone looking to program your own customer DB, or online sale ordering scripts and Member login or any of those wonderful stuff, buy Pro ASP 3.0.
This book of course is only about the intermediate level, and doesn't necessarily goes into detail everything that is at the high end of ASP. But few people who such high end stuffs, so this book is a great buy for anyone looking to learn ASP from the startup with no experience whatsoever, or for anyone who have beginner level ASP books and need Professional Level book.
Although this book is great in many aspect, I find that most of these programming books lack a sample code of how specific function work at the end of the book. As a result, reader must flip through the book to find breadown and example of codes and how they work.
Rating: 
Summary: Good for reference, not for studying.
Review: This book covers most of topic you may need. So, you can use it as a reference on ASP3. But it is not for beginner or for studying from a ground. It is quite hard-to-read, not explained in-depth, and it made me quite ???.
Rating:
Summary: Not for Beginners
Review: This book is called *Professional* Active Server Pages -- and rightfully so. Believing that I was on the Professional level, I purchased this book and read most of it before placing it on my desk at work for reference. Every once and a while I picked up this book with a specific ASP question in my head and tried to find the answer within its pages. This was a mistake.
If you're looking for a reference book, check out *Beginning* Active Server Pages -- also by Wrox press. Otherwise this book is great. The sections on ADO and XML are well written as well as the performance tuning sections. There is information on these pages that I haven't found elsewhere and for that reason alone, this is a great book to read.
My only complaint is that there seems to be a lack of good examples. The text does contain some examples, but sometimes the concepts can overcome the reader and there needs to be a bit more clarification. More pictures, code examples and general explaining would have been very helpful.
Overall, I've been very happy with this book. Wrox Press has been turning out some great books with the Web Applications Developer in mind and I hope they keep up the good work.
Rating:
Summary: All you need to know on ASP
Review: This book might be OK if you want an encyclopedia of information. But the ADO chapters are very weak. And, for me, ADO is what I need to know the most. As for debugging, I guess you can cover debugging ASP in just 4 pages. After all, ASP has virtually no debugging capability at all. You can't even set the next statement. And, looking at variables in the immediate window leaves a great deal to be desired. Even so, this book's coverage of debugging was lacking. I guess that's OK if you never plan to have any bugs. Does anyone really care about integrating with Active Directory? Or, writing C++ components? Or 10 other obscure topics? If so, this book is for you. If instead, you want to build a database application using VBScript, I suggest you use another book. I think I wasted my money. Of the entire book, I can use maybe 30 pages.
Rating:
Summary: Lots of Material, but Very Weak ADO Coverage
Review: This book might be OK if you want an encyclopedia of information. But the ADO chapters are very weak. And, for me, ADO is what I need to know the most. As for debugging, I guess you can cover debugging ASP in just 4 pages. After all, ASP has virtually no debugging capability at all. You can't even set the next statement. And, looking at variables in the immediate window leaves a great deal to be desired. Even so, this book's coverage of debugging was lacking. I guess that's OK if you never plan to have any bugs. Does anyone really care about integrating with Active Directory? Or, writing C++ components? Or 10 other obscure topics? If so, this book is for you. If instead, you want to build a database application using VBScript, I suggest you use another book. I think I wasted my money. Of the entire book, I can use maybe 30 pages.
| 
