Murach's ASP.NET 2.0 Web Programming with C# 2005

Have you seen the movie "Matrix"? Remember, when Neo says "I know Kung-Fu!" in 1 min after they plugged his head to the computer? I had the same feeling about ASP.NET after reading this book :-) The book is so easy to read, even though English is my second language.

Murach is quickly becoming my favorite publisher of books for learning new software development skills. This books continues in their tradition of books that do a very good job of selecting the most important topics and then treating those topics clearly and thoroughly enough to get you started with some real development. This book gets you up and running very quickly with ASP.Net 2.0 and C#. It covers the most important new features of ASP.Net, (such as enhanced security that at the same time is easier to implement) as well as classically important topics such as database access. The book is laid out in typical Murach style - a discussion of a byte-sized slice of a topic on the left-hand page with the corresponding example on the facing right-hand page. It's a logical and effective style that I appreciate. There are some things left out in this book - such as a discussion of classes in C# - but you have to make choices as to what to leave in and what to exclude, and I have no argument with the way these choices were made by the authors. Meanwhile, for more in-depth teachings on C#, Murach has just released a new book on this very topic, and I expect it will be their usual high quality.

This book is a comprehensive tutorial that walks the reader through the basics of virtually every aspect of Web site programming in ASP.NET 2.0. The first half of the book is dedicated in part to programmers new to Web programming in general, or new to Web programming ASP.NET. The second half of the book delves deeper into more professional Web development techniques such as database access, SSL, user authentication and profiles, and even touching on Web services and reusable Web component design. Throughout, the authors do a good job of pointing out features that are new or specific to .NET 2.0, which makes this a valuable reference even for programmers with extensive ASP.NET development experience. For every two pages in the book (it weighs in at nearly 900 pages) the content is repeated once in classic Murach style; the left-hand page is a detailed description of the concept being covered written in a conversational tone, and the right-hand page contains a recap of this discussion in bulleted-form, with screenshots and / or code samples. This layout is ideal for both novice and expert readers alike; beginners learn faster when a concept is restated / repeated, and experts can skim through the right-hand pages looking for content that is new to them. The authors assume that the reader has a working knowledge of C# syntax (there is a VB version as well), but pretty much everything else involved in Web site development using ASP .NET 2.0 is explained in detail.

There is a lot of information in this 841 page book. It is broken into five sections starting with basic ASP concepts and finishing with web services and reuseable code. Easy to read, using the "paired pages" format: How-to on the left page and examples on the right. This book continues the Murach tradition of good publications for the computer professional.

If you're even thinking about this book, you have an interest in or a project to do regarding connecting a database to a web site. This could be something simple like putting in a guest book, or more complex like a full fledged store. ASP.NET is Microsoft's vision of how this should be done (using purely Microsoft products of course). The Microsoft products used in the ASP.NET approach include the operating system (Windows - possibly XP Professional, more likely Windows Server), Internet Information Service (the web server), Visual Studio (the integrated development environment that includes C# - pronounced 'C Sharp'), and the database (probably SQL Server). The book covers these software products. It uses the Murach two-page presentation where the left hand page gives a text description of an issue, and the right hand side a more visual description of the same issue. I happen to like this format a great deal. One page tends to say the same thing in a different way. Sometimes one way is preferred (preferred means that I understand it better), sometimes the other. If you're serious about this subject, I think you also will need a book on the SQL language for the particular database you will be using. SQL is a programming language all by itself. If you just use ASP, you will be tempted to do things in ASP that would be better done in a more complex SQL statement. A great book, not for the total computer novice, but if you're planning a web site and want dynamic pages that have data coming out of a web site ....