Beginning ASP.NET in C#: From Novice to Professional (From Novice to Professional)

Rating:
Summary: just a few chapters are crucial
Review: If you want to make dynamic web pages and your machine is running .NET, then perhaps the best way is to use Active Server Pages. This actually predates .NET. But with the rise of .NET and its main language, C#, MacDonald shows how ASP.NET 1.1 has gained in power and ease of use.

He takes 1000 pages to show this. Because Microsoft now offers a huge amount of functionality in ASP.NET and extensive integration into .NET. Like how Visual Studio can [should?] be used as your IDE to write C# code for your ASPs. By the way, despite what Microsoft has touted about how you have a choice of programming languages if you use .NET, it has become increasingly clear, via this book and others, that C# is the de facto choice.

Chapters 7, 9, 10 and 11 are probably the key sections of the book. These actually focus on coding the ASP. And of these, chapter 10, on state management, may be the focal point, if you consider a set of ASPs as a finite state machine. So if you want to quickly learn ASPs, try concentrating on those chapters.

And also follow the advice by a previous reviewer about the security flaws in the book, especially in SQL injection, using strings that have not been checked.

Rating:
Summary: Reasonable introduction, has technical problems
Review: This is a tome sized introduction to ASP.NET using C#. It goes from installation, through the C# language, into web forms and control, database access, web services and into advanced topics like caching, security and component building. And all of that is stuffed into a one thousand page frame.

As you can imagine, some of the material is a little short. For example the coverage of C#, which is intended for beginners, is a mere 50 pages. Other sections, like those on web controls, and the references at the end, are well apportioned to the topic.

The database section has significant technical flaws. It uses string construction to inject GET and POST variables into the SQL statement. This is an anti-pattern which can lead to bugs, SQL injection attacks, and poor cache performance. Do not use the SQL construction techniques in this book

The book also overuses screenshots and is light on architectural illustrations.

There are some good parts. The chapter on XML is excellent, as is the one on security. The latter is ironic as the SQL code is vulnerable to injection attacks.

There is some quality reference material at the end of the book, but it is not as well organized as O'Reilly books.

Overall I think this is a reasonable introduction to ASP.NET. You will need other books to fill out the rough spots. But for someone who already knows a language like Java this would be an ideal way to see the corresponding ASP.NET methodology at a high level.

Rating:
Summary: Best Beginner ASP.NET book in C#
Review: This is simply the best book I've found for starting out with ASP.NET from a C# perspective, and I plan to use it to teach ASP.NET in the classroom. In my opinion, there are three things that put this book head and shoulders above the rest:

1) Clear explanations of WHY things work the way they do. For example, the detailed walkthrough of the postback architecture is essential for ASP.NET newcomers.
2) Lots of good recommendations and examples. The chapter of component development is a particularly good example. In a relatively small space, the author covers stateless design, describes the "ideal" component, and outlines common design issues that programmers face in real world situations, all without getting too complex or using more than a couple of paragraphs of code at a time. The IBuySpy walkthrough it another great example.
3) It has a little bit of everything. This book won't send the newbiew to other books in the first few pages. It covers "just enough" OOP, Visual Studio, and even a little bit of custom controls and dynamic graphics (GDI+).

This book is my new ASP.NET standard.