Reviews for ASP.NET 2.0 Website Programming: Problem, Design, Solution (Programmer to Programmer)

1. Must read by any ASP.NET developer

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, April 12th, 2009

   An excellent how-to on web application development. Web developers should find this book very useful in its approach to exploring requirements and product development.

2. Phenomenal!!!

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, July 12rd, 2007

   To begin with you should know that this book is most definitely not for beginners even if you are an accomplished programmer in other languages this still wouldn't be the book for you. The book is really aimed at experienced ASP.NET developers looking to move to more professional web application development and it can be hard going at times. Also the book is in C#.
   
   The purpose of this book is to teach you how to build a complete web application through the use of solid web application architecture design (OOP) using the provider model.
   
   This book really opened my eyes and cemented my understanding of OO ASP.NET; to finally see and study a complete real world example of an OO ASP.NET web application is invaluable. The book doesn't dilly dally with teaching the constructs or numerous features of ASP.NET or C# as you should already know this, although it does cover many of the new features of ASP.NET 2.0 (such as membership and profiles) as part of the project (which is a dynamic web site for a fictitious pub). Each chapter covers a site module such as newsletters, forums, polls etc and each chapter is broken into three parts discussing the problem, followed by the design for the solution, and then the actual solution of the module. Frequently the author will debate the different features you could use in the implementation of a module before settling on the best one. The author uses SQL Server as the backend so at least basic knowledge of this and SQL would be helpful. You can use the free Express edition of SQL Server, and as the author is using the provider model, you could use any other backend of your choice if you're willing to adapt the specific provider code to suit.
   
   I did get stuck on a couple of occasions but the author was tremendously helpful which really is a massive plus for technology books. You'll find yourself constantly referring back to this book more than any other when developing your own OO ASP.NET web applications. Overall hard work but quality!!!
   

3. Clever author, but why all the raw asp/html?

   Rated 3 out of 5 stars, July 12th, 2007

   I quite liked this book, looking as I was to create a website with membership and data management facilities. The author walks through a very comprehensive web project, covering just about everything ASP.Net 2.0 has to offer. He makes a good job of this in that he's very thorough and explains everything well.
   
   My one real gripe with the book is the fact that there are pages of xml and asp code to look at but almost no explanation of how those lines are generated. Does anybody really care about the text representation of an ASP.net control? I suspect we're using tools like Visual Studio to shield us from that sort of boring and tedious detail - I'd rather see screen shots of property dialogs that a line which starts and goes on for a whole page.
   
   In the end, I totally lost interest in the example, and the book's later pages remain uncreased. That's probably my fault for having a short attention span - the book certainly does cover all the features of ASP.Net 2.0.
   
   Would I recommend it? Probably! It's not an easy read and seems to assume we're all coding in notepad, but the author is very competent and there is a lot of great information in there if you're prepared to grind your way through.

4. Pretty good sample app

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, November 12th, 2006

   The book shows some sample modules of a Website (such as a forum, articles, newsletters etc) written with a layered architecture (logically separated UI, BLL and DAL layers), using custom business objects. It is quite a good showcase of the new features of ASP.NET (user profiles, object data source, gridviews and other new controls, themes, skins). Microsoft agrees and has put the code on CodePlex as an ASP.NET starter kit. Consider looking at the code before you buy the book (I did). There is also a forum for the book on the Wrox Website, which might be useful if you find some parts of the book difficult to follow (I didn't).
   
   The design on the application is also quite good. The code is written using custom business objects (not datasets), and the author shows how the provider pattern was used to implement the DAL. The author manages to sneak in a lot of new ASP.NET and .NET 2.0 functionality into the sample application, so it can be used for learning what is new in ASP.NET 2.0 (though better books probably exist for doing this).
   
   This book is probably good for people looking for reference ASP.NET 2.0 architectures for medium sized applications.
   
   I only give this book 4 stars because I got bored 1/2 way through- after reading about the gridview for the 10th time you start to fall asleep.
   

5. Crammed with useful techniques!

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, August 12nd, 2006

   This is a book that will show you in precise and clear detail how to create a real world, commercial web site. Of course, there are several books around that do exactly the same, but this one I found to be particularly good, simply because of the easy and clear explanatory writing style that Marco Bellinaso uses.
   
   Aimed at experienced developers, the book builds a fully functioning sophisticated web site.
   It includes a lot of very advanced design and coding techniques, but the explanations and the rationale behind each design and implementation decision throughout are exceptionally clear . The code behind code samples are all in C#.
   
   Although it was pitched at a higher level than my current ASP.NET skills, I still got a huge amount of value out of the book. I managed to make use of a lot of it and I just know that I will be digging back into it again and again for a long time to come as my abilities catch up with the depth and breadth of the material.
   
   Highly recommended.