Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Examples, Authors Know Their Stuff
Review: Over a year ago I posted in an ASP.NET forum complaining about the lack of good books utilizing the VS.NET IDE as a teaching tool.Well, there are several titles out there now. But few good ones. From my post it was evident that I wasn't rerally willing to learn a language but try to wing the point and click way. So one of the authors of this book just plain told me to go and learn a language like VB and then get her book. Thast was both a harsh comment and a hard sell! Apparently that is what I needed. I did realize that in no way my pretty lofty programming goals could be met with peripheral knowledge of .Net. I have a doctoral degree but programming really gave me a hard time getting started. I would get to about page 200 of your average 6-700 page computer tome and stall in a sea of poor definitions and convoluted moronic explanations we are all familiar with and dread. Which 2 year old wants a description of a cat as a feline quadripede domesticated mammal (that is a 3 letter word with that raises 4 hums?) Unfortunately, geek literature is plastered with that. So I would go on to the next title. Finally I broke down and bought this book too and it hit home. I now own more than 3 dozen programming books. I don't even program VB.Net any more but I still go back to the Torkelson/Patterson title the most because of the excellent examples, clear explanations and solid practices. Some people just have the knack to teach properly! It is a talent, like all human endeavors not equally distributed, so getting your start from an effective communicator is key. If VB.NET is your lingo this book will parley it to you the best! Cudos!
Rating:
Summary: Working knowledge of ASP.NET, VB.NET (Web) and ADO.NET.
Review: This book is aimed at teaching someone who is ALREADY exposed to VB.NET how to create database driven Websites using VB.NET, ASP.NET, and ADO.NET. It takes a database neutral approach and you could use almost any database in using this book. If you are new to VB.NET but have a good understanding of another programming language, you will still be able to follow this book. The book does not skip any steps in explaining how to use these three technologies on a Web project. It is very detailed in its explanations and has a lot of sample code that works! You have to download this sample code from their website (which is a good thing as you will have code that has been thoroughly debugged). Any problems I had using the code in this book had to do with Visual Studio.NET 2003 related problems. But once I fixed those issues, I had no trouble using the sample code. A lot of examples can be used immediately in almost any Web project you may be currently working on. In the initial stages of learning these technologies, I was lucky enough to find this book and spent a lot of time reading THIS book only and to date, I have covered more than 70% of the book. I couldn't skip any sections as they are so well written and well connected (the various topics). This type of thorough treatment of a subject in the IT world is rare and it got me thinking if it is to do with the authors or the publisher. I have already decided to check out more books by the publisher first. The thing I like the most about this book is the excellent explanations they give on how ASP.NET, VB.NET, and ADO.NET really work. They are very detailed and the explanations make sense! That combined with the practical nature of this book (tons of code) make it a very valuable find. By the time you are done with this book, you should have no trouble creating a database driven website. You still need 'ASP.NET Developer's Cookbook' by The ASP Alliance to create a complex website. But this book will give you the confidence you need to consider yourself a decent web developer in using .NET technologies. You can then go to the next level. If you are frustrated trying to find a good book on using VB.NET to design websites, you won't be disappointed with this book. I found only a few books on .NET that I really like and this book made the Top 3 of that list. Enjoy using this book to master ASP.NET, VB.NET, and ADO.NET for the Web!
Rating:
Summary: A Superb ASP.NET Book for VB Programmers!
Review: This exceptionally well-written and well-organized book contained exactly the information I needed to come up to speed on ASP.NET. In a nutshell, this book clearly explained how I could use VB.NET to build and install a successful and attractive Web site. I like that the authors don't confine themselves to describing the capabilities of ASP.NET, ADO.NET, and so on, although they do describe those capabilities very thoroughly indeed. Commercial Web developers themselves, the authors frequently reveal glimpses of their passion for creating excellent, successful Web sites. Throughout the book, they explain the whats and the whys of good Web development practices right along with the hows. The code examples they give reinforce their approach by showing how to use VB.NET to improve the experience of a Web site visitor. Some of the examples are stunningly attractive. Although I've been programming with VB for several years now, my company previously farmed out its Web development work to outside vendors, so I didn't come to VB.NET with a lot of ASP experience under my belt. That may be one reason that this book struck such a responsive chord with me. It assumes that you know how to program, but it doesn't assume that you're already a Web developer. If you're upgrading your skills from VB6, though, don't make this your first book on VB.NET. The authors devote no space whatever to the differences between VB6 and VB.NET. When my company migrated our development language from VB6 to VB.NET, I found a couple of other Apress books on VB.NET to be very helpful (once I got over the shock of how different VB had become). But after a programmer gets comfortable with VB.NET, this book is--for my money--the best of the lot. I originally bought several of the best-selling books on ASP.NET, but got bogged down pretty fast. For someone like me, who did not start out as an ASP guru, the mass of somewhat disconnected details did not tell me what I needed to know to create a good Web site. This book got me over that hurdle. Like most programmers, I pride myself on being able to find some fault with anything. With this book, it was hard to find a flaw, but here's my best shot. In chapter 4, I ran some example code before reading the instructions and got a browser screen with an error message. (I was writing an image created on the fly to a directory before setting the necessary permissions.) In my opinion, the authors should have provided a custom error screen telling me exactly what I needed to do to fix the problem. Then they could have used this as an example in chapter 14 where they do, in fact, show how to display a custom error screen. Other than that, I can't recall any problems at all with the code. Clearly the authors of this book care deeply about the quality of their written work as well as the Web sites they develop.
Rating: 
Summary: GOOD BOOK, BUT NO INSIGHTS
Review: This is a good book, in fact, it's one of the best ASP.NET/VB.NET books I have read. However, it doesn't offer anything new or fresh or different. If you're going to buy just one ASP.NET book, get this one. If you're looking for an advanced book, keep looking.
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