Reviews for ASP.NET 3.5 Enterprise Application Development with Visual Studio 2008: Problem Design Solution (Wrox Programmer to Programmer)

1. Has good ideas for enforcing consistency in an application

   Rated 3 out of 5 stars, March 12th, 2010

   I agree with other comments that this book does not address design patterns per se. So therefore the use of the word "Enterprise" in the book title could be misleading. Other concerns that one might consider to be "Enterprise" such as scalability and distribution etc are also not covered.
   
   What this book does offer however, is some good pragmatic ideas as to how one could make use of some of the features provided by the .Net Framework to enforce consistency and code re-use in an application that has many developers ploughing code into it - which could be contrived to be an "Enterprise environment" I guess. I think this book is especially relevant to Intranet developers. If you have an intermediate knowledge of Object Orientated programming and are used to working with a multi-layered application then this may offer some interesting ideas, but it isn't going to provide you all the answers relating to Enterprise Architectures.

2. An informative read for the senior develper

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, April 12th, 2009

   This book covers the specification, design and build of a Vaction Booking system to be used by a HR department.
   
   The tools, methodologies and technologies used are up to date (Visual Studio 2008, LINQ 2 SQL, ASP.NET AJAX, Generics etc..) and the author provides detailed, yet simple and logical explanations of his approach to the solution.
   
   While i would not employ all of the approaches used in this book, i will definitely take some of them. It is well worth a read if you are building systems of any size with the above mentioned technologies.

3. It's okay, but I expected more..

   Rated 2 out of 5 stars, April 12st, 2009

   The book comes in handy to think about where in your system you want to place what. For instance, validation goes into your business layer instead of in the UI. Stuff like that is always good to think about.
   
   On the other hand, the book doesn't really cope with newer technologies I'm interested in. There's nothing in there about how you can actually use Linq2sql (or the Entity Framework for that matter) in an enterprise architecture (things like disconnected entities, design patterns, SOA, etc). Also, the book really is very focused on doing all kinds of things yourself (o/r mapping, etc) while it would be very interesting to see what tools an enterprise developer actually could use for o/r mapping, code and forms generation, unit testing, etc.. minimizing the need to write code yourself.
   
   Also, I've expected Enterprise Application Development should be more about the rationale of developing scalable, modular, reusable systems.. and not so much about writing stored procedures.
   
   So overall I was a bit dissapointed..

4. Not Enterprise Application Development

   Rated 1 out of 5 stars, April 12th, 2009

   This is an entry level book and makes no attempt to explain how to build an Enterprise Application i.e no WCF, WWF, Software Patterns, unit testing, software factories etc.
   I would recommend the reader take a look at the following book by Dino Esposito and Andrea Saltarello
   Microsoft® .NET: Architecting Applications for the Enterprise (PRO-Developer)
   and by Martin Fowler
   Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture (The Addison-Wesley signature series)
   and by Eric Evans
   Domain-driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software