Rating: 
Summary: The Devil is in the Details
Review: This is the book I have been waiting for! Since last summer, when ASP.NET was (somewhat) introduced and the best practices app IBuySpy was released, I and others have awaited a tome that would walk us through the process of building an ASP.NET intranet step-by-step and this book is it. It starts off by highlighting what is important to have in an intranet but it quickly gets down to the nitty-gritty of (1) dissecting IBuySpy and (2) showing how to customize and extend the IBS application to a full fledged intranet portal. Their explanations are well written and concise and there were a number of topics that I was able to finally understand. This book is not exactly for newbies, but for the person that has gotten their feet wet with ASP.NET and wants to get his or her hands dirty with a serious project. I only have one negative point about this book and it is the reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5. No CD and No online code. I do not know about the rest of you, but I would have prefered to spend an extra 5-10 dollars not to have to type all of this code over again. Additionally, the authors use an abstracted database class in all of their code that is supposed to be downloadable from the WROX website, but, at this time, is not available, which was very frustrating. The upside is, I ended up re-writing it myself, so I actually ended up learning more! All in all, a good book and well worth the price.
Rating: 
Summary: Outstanding IBuySpy (pre-DotNetNuke) Book!
Review: [...]
I picked this book up about three years to late, as it is entirely written about the original IBuySpy Portal framework, and I am an avid DotNetNuke module developer. The author presents numerous great examples of custom module development for IBuySpy, including a simple library application, extended discussions module, a complex Human Resources module, and a great Document Management System. Keep in mind IBuySpy is the forerunner to DotNetNuke, and all of the modules outlined in the book port nicely to the newer architecture, as they leverage many of the features moved forward into DotNetNuke, like user account integration, portal security, and more.
As I worked through configuring the various samples provided with the book, I got to set up & play with the original IBuySpy Portal framework after nearly three years of playing with it for the for the first time. When it was first released, it very intimidating in some of it's implementation details, although it didn't appear as sophisticated in it's business architecture, unlike the original Reports, Time Tracking, & Issue Tracking kits.
The book provides one of the best guides I have read to everything IBuySpy. The second time looking at IBuySpy portal, I was more able to appreciate the great concepts introduced in it, and I was at times amazed at how simple the IBuySpy Portal is when compared to the latest version of DotNetNuke. With the Introduction of the DotNetNuke Data Access Layer (DAL) in version 2.x, DotNetNuke was able to encapsulate all of the sophistication, and more, of the business layer found in the Time Tracking/Reports starter kits, at which point I was hooked.
I found the Document Management System described in Chapter 9 sophisticated enough that I believed it was worth the effort to convert it to a modern DotNetNuke module. The module is very well designed and documented in the book, so I decided on an uneventful Sunday afternoon to start converting it. Approximately 40 hours of development later, I have completed converting the module to DotNetNuke 2.1.2 (DotNetNuke 3.0.9 was released two days before the writing of this review).
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