Rating: 
Summary: Good Book But I hope To Have a C# Source Code
Review: After Reading All The Book I think that this book deal very well with intranet applications but it is specific to understanding and upgrading the IBuySpy Portal Application but you can always use this knowldge in order to develop other intranet applications ,instead of building everything from ground up the authors learn us how to take advantage of an existing applications distributed freely and customise it .
I gave the book 4 stars because the source code distributed with the book is in VB.Net and there is no C# version like other WROX Books and I hope that WROX will distibute the C# version of the source code soon .
Rating:
Summary: A good overview of the IBuySpy application
Review: Having installed and made a few (trivial) changes to the IBuySpy portal application, I decided to get this book in order to make sure that I didn't 'miss any tricks'.
The book doesn't disappoint. It's a good overview of the application with detailed instructions on the installation process and operational level usage of the product.A useful discussion of the portal architecture is followed by detailed discussions of the underlying concepts of security, specific modules, content and document management.
Finally, there is an analysis of a new module - Human resources management, in which all the issues that you would normally have to deal with in a real-world development are met. The only real disappointment was that the download code listed in the book was not yet available from Wrox.com - no doubt that will be resolved in short order. There are more than a thousand instances of the IBuySpy portal already on the web, with many hundreds more in the making. This book is an ideal introduction to the subject.
Rating: 
Summary: Good blueprint; confusing target audience.
Review: I bought this book because I have been thrust into the Intranet development world, and I really don't have a lot of experience building multi-functional web pages. I bought this book to really help me understand the IBuySpy portal, and I have used it to customize that package for a couple of different web sites now. The Good:
The book is very good at explaining the various components of the IBuySpy Portal. It's a lot like a tourist map; highlighting certain pieces (while complete overlooking other aspects). The Bad:
As others have noted, this book doesn't go deep into explaining ASP.NET, or how to use classes in the .NET architecture. It merely allows you to copy a lot of code, cross your fingers, and see something work. The Ugly:
As with most "best-of-breed" solutions from Microsoft, stuff breaks. While this particular manual does point out why some stuff doesn't work as well as intended, it doesn't go into a lot of detail (and don't expect it to catch everything). In Sum: Buy this book if you have a need to get an intranet up and running quickly, and want to impress your non-developer friends. Don't buy it if you're expecting to use it to learn ASP.NET.
Rating:
Summary: No CD, broken promise of downloadable code
Review: I bought this book for 62 Euros (75 USD) in Lisbon that is too much for 450 pages (with promos, content, indexes, images from internet) book without any CD and with broken promise of the downloadable code! IMHO, there was no need to bloat the volume of a book and reader's tiredness reprinting from internet the lengthy code examples just for the sake of a few modifications and after that again printing, again, the resulting snippets (it is proper only for e-books) Since the book is oriented for working with codes, the absence of electronic version is also the great drawback. The book seems to be the monopolist on IBuySpy Portal (the only one available) , but I wouldn't have bought it, had I known about mentioned above. While the book is useful (in abscence of any other choice, esp. in electronic version), I estimate the ratio "price/worthyness" as extremely high PS
I was also more interested in C# and/or Visual Studio .NET versions of IBuySpy Portal, and I think VB.NET is just inappropriate language for the middle-, like IBuySpy Portal,
and large-size projects)
Rating: 
Summary: Mostly just code listings
Review: I didn't much care for this book. It never really explains the how or why, it just lists code. "Now we'll add an edit button: <code...> Now we'll add a delete button: <code...>". There's no explanation of what the code means, how the ASP pages link to the code-behind pages, etc. I'm not sure who the target audience is. It's not technical enough for geeky types, but too technical for administrative types. I guess it's aimed at script kiddy types who want to copy code without really understanding how it works.
Rating: 
Summary: Great IBuySpy book
Review: I really like the approach that this book takes. Using the IBuySpy example means that all the mailing lists and forums about it will be useful. The explanations in the early chapters really cleared up how IBuySpy works for me. Especially on security. The later chapters led me through some great coding techniques. The download worked fine for me. I guess the authors sorted it out since those previous reviews.
Rating: 
Summary: Another "let's get it published asap" book.
Review: If you wish to understand the IBUY Portal, don't count on this book to help you. I didn't like the style and structure of this book. I got the sense that this book was just another rush publication with a group of programmers getting together, assigning chapters with desired content and then got down to pulling and writing code. WROX needs to do a better job of controlling quality and up front planning for their books. Sorry, but this book shows none of that. The design of the existing site was mostly crammed into a single chapter. A decent database diagram was not included and no UML or other diagrams were presented so we could easily understand the Object architecture. Instead, the documentation was simply a straight lift from sql server table descriptions. I found myself drawing my own diagrams as I went through the book. An architect's perspective was desparately needed in this first chapter. I won't be buying any more WROX books if things don't improve by enforcing good technical writing standards for their publications.
Rating:
Summary: A Fair review
Review: In order to use this book effectively, you really need a good understanding of SQL and SQL stored procedures. The book isn't for SQL Beginners. The tables come from WROX without the identities being set, so you will need to know how to do that. The book also requires a good understanding of stored procedures, you will need to know how to fix the stored procedure if it isn't working correctly. The easy way to work with the stored procedures and all of the changes the WROX programmers made to IBUYSPY is to load their backup database onto your server using a different database name, then import the tables and stored procedures you need into your Portal database. There are some problems with the code that requires revising the name spaces and assembly references to get them to work with the ASPNET Portal, but once modified the code does work well for the most part. I really wish the WROX programmers had spent more time on the RTF piece. I eventually replaced the RTF functionality with someone else's software, but I have to admit that I learned alot about ASP.NET controls by examining the WROX RTF code. The document management piece is worth the price of the book. The documentation really is not very good but if you study the code, you'll learn alot. I disagree strongly with the reviewer who stated this is for people who want code but don't want to learn what it does. If you can make the WROX code work, you're doing pretty well.
Rating:
Summary: A Fair review
Review: In order to use this book effectively, you really need a good understanding of SQL and SQL stored procedures. The book isn't for SQL Beginners. The tables come from WROX without the identities being set, so you will need to know how to do that. The book also requires a good understanding of stored procedures, you will need to know how to fix the stored procedure if it isn't working correctly. The easy way to work with the stored procedures and all of the changes the WROX programmers made to IBUYSPY is to load their backup database onto your server using a different database name, then import the tables and stored procedures you need into your Portal database. There are some problems with the code that requires revising the name spaces and assembly references to get them to work with the ASPNET Portal, but once modified the code does work well for the most part. I really wish the WROX programmers had spent more time on the RTF piece. I eventually replaced the RTF functionality with someone else's software, but I have to admit that I learned alot about ASP.NET controls by examining the WROX RTF code. The document management piece is worth the price of the book. The documentation really is not very good but if you study the code, you'll learn alot. I disagree strongly with the reviewer who stated this is for people who want code but don't want to learn what it does. If you can make the WROX code work, you're doing pretty well.
Rating:
Summary: This book rocks!!!
Review: This book is just what I have been looking for. The documents and content apps in particular saved me from having to hire a consultant that was asking $$$ to do lesser work!
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