Professional ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 Edition: In C# and VB [Hardcover]

Although this book covers a myriad of topics many of the code examples are riddled with errors or simply don't work which makes the lesson useless. It would be nice if each chapter built upon a previous chapter and you ended up with something resembling an application. Just slapping together a bunch of hodgepodge code means very little when you are trying to learn how to tie it all together.

I really wish the rating system allowed for 1/2 star increments. I'm still in the process of reading this book, but so far I'd give it 3 1/2 stars (not 3, not 4...3 1/2).

I'm only a short way into the book, but I'm already a bit annoyed with some of the presentation. Having recently read "Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 In C# and VB", I really expected this book to follow a similar format: explanation of concept, hands-on example with detailed explanation of how it all works / fits together. That's not how this book is written. You get a description of the concept, and then you get a code example. In the "Beginning..." book, the code examples built upon each other (for the most part), and by the end of the book, you had built a functional (if somewhat simplistic) website. In this book, there is no building process (so far). Everything is presented independently, with very little information to put it into context, and nothing other than the conceptual explanation for how it actually "works". Furthermore, the authors assume that the reader is already well-versed in many of the nuances of the VB.net and C# programming languages -- no explanation for some of the coding constructs used in the examples are provided. Fortunately for me, I've been programming for 20 years, so I'm not having a problem following the examples so far. I am concerned that by the end of the book I'll have run into some obscure construct that I haven't encountered before.

My biggest pet peeve with the presentation has to do with how the author has chosen to present much of the sample code. After informing the reader that with Visual Studio 2008, there is now very good support for using a "code-behind" model for writing the ASP scripting, and that this is the preferred and superior way to do things (in Chapter 1 or 2 -- I forget which), he proceeds to do almost every example (so far) doing on-page scripting, not using the codebehind model at all! For my money, don't tell me that something is the best way to do things, and then not do it! (Stepping down off soapbox now).

That aside, so far the content itself is excellent -- which is the main reason I'd like to be able to give the book above a 3-star rating. After all, I'm mainly interested in the content in the first place. I'll update my review as I get further into the book (I'm less than 1/5th of the way through the 1715 pages of content contained in this behemoth). I'm hoping to be able to give it a higher rating by the time I'm done.

I received the hardback version from my user group, Inland Empire .NET User Group, [...] . This is the ASP.NET 3.5 Service Pack 1 Edition, so you know it is up to date for the latest usage in either Visual Web Developer or Visual Studio 2008.

Code samples are shown in both C# and VB, making it easy for any DOT NET Developer to quickly get up to speed with this advanced technology for web development. I started out with "Sams Teach Yourself ASP.NET 3.5 in 24 Hours" as my primer to learn the basics of ASP.NET web development. Once you have grasped the basics in that book, I'd strongly suggest you purchase "Professional ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 In C# and VB", written by Bill Evjen, Scott Hanselman, and Devin Raider, all of whom are expert .NET developers.

There are 37 extensive chapters, and 5 appendices covering topics such as "Working with Master Pages", which is a huge improvement on the old ASP Include files, which laid out headers and footers. A most important topic is how to handle data with ASP.NET web pages, with Chapters titled: "Data Binding in ASP.NET 3.5", or "Data Management with ADO.NET". The new SQLDataSource control makes data connection and access much easier than in previous versions of Visual Studio, allowing access to SQL Server, SQL Server Express, Oracle databases, ODBC and OLE DB data sources, as well as the SQL CE database. The differences between client-side and server-side validations are clearly explained. Validation controls are explained in Chapter 4. I have found it necessary to delve into validation controls in order to more clearly understand how to use them with the GridView.

Everyone's heard about AJAX, even in the Adobe ColdFusion development world. AJAX means - Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. I installed the free AJAX Toolkit Controls recently. I intend to get into them through the use of this book. You can go to: www.asp.net/ajax/ to download the AJAX Control Toolkit for free. You can download the ASP.NET Ajax Library from the Ajax.CodePlex.com website. The Ajax Control Toolkit contains a rich set of controls, such as the AutoComplete, Calendar, MaskedEdit, Accordion, and Watermark controls.

Coming from Visual FoxPro development into .NET has been made much easier by having this reference book available to explain all the many aspects of .NET development. Without doing much coding in either C# or VB, you can have a basic web site up and running in no time. With the help of this book and a little more work, you can develop secure and powerful websites for your customers.

I would suggest this book for the Beginner to Expert level. It's a huge read and will take time to get through it; if you are a beginner, it'd probably be best to get any project to start with, even if you have to do one for free, and just get started. Read the basic parts of the book you will need to get started and then refer to the more complex parts, as needed. You won't be disappointed. This book makes software development fun again!