Pro ASP.NET 1.1 in C#: From Professional to Expert

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Summary: a full object oriented ASP.NET
Review: Amongst developers who use Microsoft's operating systems, ASP.NET is a grand chance for coding web applications on a server. The .NET platform is an elegant framework upon which C# is optimised for. Some of you already know ASP in its pre-.NET incarnation. But the book shows that Microsoft has thoroughly overhauled ASP. Putting the new current ASP.NET 1.1 into a full object oriented mode. One consequence is that new ASP code can be scaled up to far larger source code lengths. The earlier scripting version, and most scripting languages for that matter, tended to be procedural, and scaled badly. So it's very good news for the new ASP.NET.

The book gives considerable exposition of how to use JavaScript with ASP. Amusingly to some, it does not mention JScript at all. And Microsoft's VBScript merits only one sentence. For client side browser scripting, JavaScript is the standard.

The Web Services description in the book only goes up to an explanation of Web Services Description Language. The book's printing date is 2005. No mention of Business Process Execution Language, which looks to be where the action is, in Web Services, not WSDL.

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Summary: Must read for the seroius ASP.NET developer
Review: This is one of the better books on ASP.NET. Unlike several other books, this does not spend a great deal of time rehashing stuff about the CLR. Although written by several authors, it is refreshingly well organized around four main areas - core concepts, data access, security, and advanced. Written for the advanced professional, this book covers the why and how of most essential topics, including HTTP handlers, session management, configuration, disconnected data, files and streams, data binding. The chapters on WSE, custom server controls, user controls, ADO.NET, XML, and SOAP can be used as reference, and are enough to get you using those concepts right away. This book includes a chapter on JavaScript, which is something other books are lacking.