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Developing Web Applications with Visual Basic NET and ASP NET

John Alexander and bestselling author Billy Hollis show programmers how to develop enterprise-level Web applications using Microsoft’s popular programming language—Visual Basic.NET.

• Features the incomparable insights and programming know-how of two popular Microsoft insiders, arming developers with proven tips and workarounds to use in their own projects
• Provides step-by-step instruction for creating business Web applications using ASP.NET and VB.NET
• Companion Web site contains all the code for the sample application

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Thanks for a Fantastic Read!!!
This was a delightful book to read. I am a very seasoned VB6/ASP Developer who is about to get his feet wet with .NET. Your book provides the direction I need to make a comfortable transition…Your examples were of the level I anticipated, and your dialog made it very easy to follow along.

My hat goes off to all of the authors who created this very readable and worthwhile book! Thanks so much!

3 Stars Good but needs an update
This book gave me a good understanding of the methodology of ASP.NET as well as the concepts behind it. The organization of the book is good for someone new to ASP.NET and C# as it starts simple and proceeds forward in a logical manner to more complex topics.

However, I agree with a previous reviewer that an updated version or an errata page on the publisher’s web site are sorely needed. This too kept me from giving it 5 stars.

This book was started with a pre-release of Visual Studio.NET 2002 so the example code won’t match the code you generate yourself; most people should be able to figure out which parts of the sample code are relevent. A few of the samples won’t work as-is but that shouldn’t stop experienced programmers from figuring out how to get it to work.

5 Stars Excelente Book
I preordered and received it on April 12,2002.
Hasta ahora el libro esta excelente. El Capitulo de “Object-Oriented Changes in Visual Basic” esta tan bueno que vale lo que pesa en oro.
Nunca habia visto una explicacion de Programacion Orientada a Objeto tan facil de entender; con ejemplos tan claros.
El libro no es grande asi que se puede leer en un par de semanas.
El precio esta muy bueno tambien.
Eso si, debes tener idea de como programar en VB6 para que puedas entender las diferencias con VB.NET.

3 Stars Good info, poor proofreading
I read this book cover to cover, and worked through virtually all the examples. There’s a lot of good information here, but proofreading is poor, and more information is needed to get some of the more complex sample code (provided at the author’s web site) operational on one’s local machine. That’s rather frustrating after making a large investment in studying the text.

Most of the textual content of the book is well-written and helpful. Chapter 6, “Using ASP.NET Web Controls”, is a bit garbled and buggy.

The web page for downloads related to the book currently has no errata section, in spite of the existence of plenty of errata. Perhaps one reason there is no list is that no easy way is provided to contact the authors or publisher with bug reports.

For a five-star rating from me this book would need:

(1) Another proofreading pass, with emphasis on making sure code examples work (with thought given to conditions on local machines that might cause particular ones not to work); and

(2) An active feedback loop between readers and the author. A discussion forum for reader-to-reader interaction would be helpful, too.

5 Stars Good stuff
I found this book to be very helpful! It is an excellent source of information for the VB6 developer making the transition to .NET. The OOP chapter was great. It’s great for learning to use the IDE and other related features. In reference to the last review: I found that there are revisions and a feedback loop available at the website.

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Programming NET Web Services

Web services are poised to become a key technology for a wide range of Internet-enabled applications, spanning everything from straight B2B systems to mobile devices and proprietary in-house software. While there are several tools and platforms that can be used for building web services, developers are finding a powerful tool in Microsoft’s .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET. Designed from scratch to support the development of web services, the .NET Framework simplifies the process–programmers find that tasks that took an hour using the SOAP Toolkit take just minutes. Programming .NET Web Services is a comprehensive tutorial that teaches you the skills needed to develop web services hosted on the .NET platform. Written for experienced programmers, this book takes you beyond the obvious functionality of ASP.NET or Visual Studio .NET to give you a solid foundation in the building blocks of web services, and leads you step-by-step through the process of creating your own. Beginning with a close look at the underlying technologies of web services, including the benefits and limitations, Programming .NET Web Services discusses the unique features of the .NET Framework that make creating web services easier, including the Common Language Runtime (CLR) and the namespaces used in .NET programming. Filled with numerous code examples using the C# language, the book leads you through some of the more challenging issues of web services development, including the use of proxies, marshalling of complex data types, state management, security, performance tuning and cross-platform implementation. The book also covers:

• Creating and publishing your first web service
• The UDDI project, tModels and what they mean for web service publishers Securing web service applications

Written for programmers who are familiar with the .NET Framework and interested in building industrial-strength web services, Programming .NET Web Services is full of practical information and good old-fashioned advice.

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars VERY GOOD .NET WEB COVERAGE
“Programming .NET Web Services” is an easy-to-understand text, which simplified all the difficult aspects of XML Web Services (as it concerned Microsoft .NET platform).
At 500 pages, this book is not that voluminous, yet, it detailed most of the essential issues needed in order to utilize all the .NET options which one is likely to encounter on both Microsoft and non-Microsoft clients.
I really find this book useful, despite the fact that some of its elaborations are not as extensive as I would like them to be. This textbook is better used as a daily text, or as the case may be, a quick reference resource.

5 Stars Awesome book
I am reading this book after looking at some other WebService books, and this one is climbing the charts.

All the chapters are very thorough and I am quite surprised that not many people have discovered this gem.

Grab a copy and read it, and you will become a confident and knowledgeable web services developer.

5 Stars one of the best titles for web services developers
This text addresses just about every challenge a web-services developer may face. Whether it involves calling a set of services asynchronously (and somehow keeping the client(s) updated of its progress) - or whether it is monitoring, profiling and logging your web-services - this text contains well explained examples of doing a lot of useful stuff.
It has saved me a lot of time - and I found it well worth the price.

4 Stars Understand web services in a .NET environment
Web Services are a catchphrase that many Microsoft-centric developers are falling in love with and they don’t know why. Hey, the affair isn’t limited to Microsoft based development firms. Web Services are hot topics right now. They provide the best way yet to utilize the Internet for remote work.

For the uninitiated (and aren’t we all at one time or another), web services are programs that rely on SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) to expose their interfaces across the Internet. This means you can write a program and, if you make it a web service, you will expose its public interfaces for anyone to use via the Internet.

This book takes a normal O’Reilly tack of presenting in-depth information that is appropriate for users who want to know the wherefores behind the decisions. The authors present the Microsoft/Visual Studio methodology where many of the tedious tasks of Web Service development are performed for the user. They also do a solid job of presenting why that work must be done by someone and how to do it if you don’t want to use Visual Studio .NET (VS.NET). The book gives good information (about 30 pages) covering Web Service Description Language (WSDL) before it covers the incredible facility VS.NET provides for generating these documents. WSDL docs are necessary for every web service you build if you expect anyone to use your program. The authors explain and lead the reader through the process of writing a web service and consuming a web service. They also expend effort on discussing stateful versus non-stateful web services and how to appropriately choose the best methodology for your application. With the performance gains that can be attained in IIS 6 via caching, the assertion the authors make about considering caching during design phase rather than after development is in testing or production struck a chord. The book covers IIS 6’s caching choices as well as explaining the benefits and drawbacks of both. I didn’t finish the debugging and security sections but plan to get back into the book and finish them as they look valuable.

In conclusion, if you want to mine a book for a robust understanding of web services and the constituent pieces of that technology (with all your examples in C#) then this book is for you. If you’re looking to get a 5 minute read and start throwing code (and probably exceptions), pick up a less thorough book. You’ll actually read this one instead of just looking for examples to copy. The information this book imparts should be standard knowledge for anyone that expects to write production quality web services.

5 Stars Programming .NET Web Services
I like this book. It’s very useful for a web developer.

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Real World ASP NET Best Practices

ASP.NET is a wonderful new enabling technology that allows developers to create business solutions much more effectively than ever before. However, there is room for improvement. Developers often do not see the potholes and pitfalls related to this technology until they stumble. Real World ASP.NET Best Practices helps readers to avoid just such frustrations. The book’s in-depth coverage includes data handling, caching, JavaScript, user and server controls, distributed programming, configuration, and deployment.

Real World ASP.NET Best Practices goes far beyond the documentation to teach ASP.NET development best practices based on the authors’ real-world experience. The book’s emphasis is on helping developers perform tasks correctly and avoid mistakes, not on teaching ASP.NET in general.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Real World ASP.Net Best Practices
Great book. Helped starting with .NET and best practices. I have read it more than once and have passed it on to associated to read!

5 Stars Must Have!!!
Straight to the wound advices, real-world experience and also shows the reasons and alternatives… I’m waiting for the next edition.

5 Stars A must-read for serious ASP.NET programmers
This book did a pretty good job in showing you different ways to accomplish common, real-world tasks in ASP.NET, and why you should choose one way over the other, based on performance analysis and ease of coding.

It’s not a tutorial, so you do need to have some preliminary experience with ASP.NET to appreciate these best practices.

One thing I especially like about the book is that they authors took the trouble to run each of their code samples through Application Center Test and compare the performance results to draw their conclusions, whereas most other ASP.NET books on the market simply make lame claims.

Although it has only 200 pages, there are plenty of things to take home with after reading this awesome title.

5 Stars A Real Eye Opener
This book is MUST reading for any experienced .NET developer. It’s the kind of book that leaves you saying,”Ohhh, now that makes sense”. Of all the ASP.NET books in my library, it is the only one that has a chapter on using JavaScript. It is a well written book but developers who have done previous ASP.NET development will get the most out of it.

4 Stars readable book
I enjoy reading this book, very good.

Improvement for future edition:
– DataReader (DataReader vs. DataSet)
– when to use Exception
– Performance tuning for the SQL Server
– Physical production environment (like networking)
– Security, security, security

overall, I do enjoy reading this book.

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Programming Visual Basic 2005

This newest programming guide by bestselling author Jesse Liberty isn’t your typical Visual Basic book. It’s not a primer on the language, and it won’t dull your brain with arguments hyping .NET either. Its goal, rather, is to make you immediately productive, creating Windows and Web applications using Visual Basic 2005 and Visual Studio 2005.

Written for VB6 and novice programmers, the book shows how Visual Basic 2005 can be used to rapidly build modern Windows and web applications.

What makes this book different is what’s not included. There’s no introduction to Visual Basic, no explanation of how it fits into the .NET world. Why waste time reading about something you’ll learn for yourself as soon as you start creating applications? You won’t even write a “Hello World” program. With Programming Visual Basic 2005 you’ll get started building something meaningful, right away.

The book is divided into three parts–Building Windows Applications, Building Web Applications, and Programming with Visual Basic–each of which could be a book on its own. The author shares his thorough understanding of the subject matter through lucid explanations and intelligently designed lessons that guide you to increasing levels of expertise. By the time you’ve finished the book, you’ll know how to program both Windows and web applications with VB 2005.

The support for this book extends beyond its covers. Jesse offers a FAQ, Errata, complete source code and a link to a free private support discussion center on his web site: LibertyAssociates.com - just click on books.

Jesse Liberty, Microsoft .NET MVP, is the best-selling author of O’Reilly Media’s Programming ASP.NET and over a dozen other books on web and object-oriented programming. Jesse is a frequent contributor to many industry publications and websites, and has spoken at numerous industry events. He is a former Distinguished Software Engineer at AT&T and Vice President for technology development at CitiBank.

Jesse Liberty’s books have successfully guided thousands of programmers into the world of .NET programming, and Programming Visual Basic 2005 is no exception.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Learn Visual Basic 2005
What’s with the negative reviews on amazon for this book?!? Plain and simple, Jesse Liberty is one of the top technical writers out there in the field today and I have YET to read a book by him that I haven’t liked. Who cares if there are a few typos in a book, the main things that I am concerned about are if the writing is good, the layout is easy to follow with images and graphics put in at the right places, and the flow is tight and concise. The author achieves all of these goals in this book — quite simply, if you use Visual Basic 2005 and you want to become a better programmer and desire to learn from a true expert in the field, pick up ‘Programming Visual Basic 2005′ today… you won’t regret it.

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

5 Stars Great Second VB Book
I have been through many VB books including expensive college texts. I immediately found this to be the best one. I picked it up at a Borders (oops…) because I was sick of ordering books online and not liking them when I finally got them in the mail. After I read the first chapter in the book store, I didn’t want to wait to get started so I paid the $40.

I found that something simple like naming conventions or form design can ruin a potentially great book. Jesse Liberty uses the standard naming convention (txtName, btnSelect, etc.) and is not nearly as strict with form design as most books I have been through.

I recommend this as a second book because, though chapter 15 and 16 are superb in describing the basics, the complete beginner may be better off with a “For Dummies” book or something like that.

Some SQL knowledge also makes the book go down easier.

1 Star Jesse Liberty Fails to Update the Errata
After spending many hours trying to figure why the sample code didn’t work, I found the answer buried on Jesse Liberty’s message board. A fellow reader points out an error on Jan 21 and as of June 26 Jesse has yet to update his errata. Most tech books have a decent size errata and that is to be expected, but for an author to fail in his responsibility at the cost of many collective hours by his readers is extremely inconsiderate. This book is in my trash can at the moment.

5 Stars VERY VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
Are you a Visual Basic programmer? If you are, then this book is for you! Author Jesse Liberty, has done an outstanding job of writing a book that makes you productive immediately to create Windows and Web applications using Visual Basic and its associated tools.

Liberty, begins by describing how to respond to events to build interactive applications. Then, the author shows you how to use drag-and-drop controls to create that connectivity, how to query with parameters, and how to build master/detail pages. He continues with a review of built-in browser controls. Next, the author discusses custom controls. Then he shows you how to use GDI+ and other techniques to draw dynamic applications. He also shows you how to detect mouse events and respond to them. Then, he shows you how to integrate legacy Com controls in a managed situation. The author continues by showing you how to create complex and sophisticated Windows applications. Next, he shows you the library of controls created for you to greatly simplify these tasks. Then, the author walks you through the controls that makes mastering pages and navigation a very easy task. He continues by showing you how to update the database and manage multiuser applications. Next, the author discusses personalization. Then, he shows you how to create web services and also how to create applications that use web services. He also takes you into some of the nooks and crannies of this tool. Next, the author provides a review of the visual basic language in detail. Then, he shows you how to use the new generic collections to create type-safe stacks, queues, and dictionaries. Finally, the author provides a slightly more formal overview of the visual basic language.

The goal of this most excellent book is to make you immediately productive, creating Windows and Web applications using Visual Basic and its associated tools. Thus, by creating applications, you will learn Visual Basic as it has evolved for .NET!

3 Stars Not a complete transition to VB.Net
I absolutely love Jesse’s books and articles. However, this book does not have a page dedicated to ADO.Net nor does Jesse talk about the debugging methods of VS 2005.

I understand writing a book is not easy, but I feel these are two critical components of .Net development

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ASP NET for Web Designers VOICES

Teaching ASP.NET in a non-linear format that creative thinkers can easily grasp and understand without the typical programming jargon. Provides clear and concise, hands-on, real-world examples right from the beginning of the book. The book contains a natural progression by providing foundational information in the opening chapters. Content will be presented with “hands-on” examples so the opening chapters will also be laying the groundwork for more advanced subjects by not only presenting the information but by writing code as well. The middle section of the book covers the key cast members on the .NET stage including HTML Controls, Web Controls and List Controls. The third and final section of the book covers more advanced issues in ASP.NET including data access and security issues.

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars Unique Book that doesn’t regurgitate the SDK docs
A unique book that serves as a strong starting point for non-programmers who want an overview of asp.net basics and who do not all-ready know how to program. Why is "ASP.NET for Web Designers" a unique book? Many asp.net intro books assume prior programming experience; many read as though MS gave the author an outline and content templates for the writer to <<add intro paragraph here>>. Ladka however thinks for himself: the result- a useful & unique book. Yes, he covers the server controls as all intro books should, but in addition to covering the bare minimum he does a nice job explaining and demonstrating how to implement OO concepts in your development.

Downside: He tries too hard to make the book’s examples "user friendly." Ladka likes food allot and all the examples revolve around this topic to the point annoying the reader.

Over all a great book for someone wanting an introduction to Asp.Net and an intro on how to program with it.

4 Stars Decent, not the best…
This book is good for anyone wanting to get their feet wet with asp.net. It’s nice they presented both vb.net and C# code however, this book is riddled with syntax errors like the holes in swiss cheese.
Peter Ladka did a good job with the overall material of this book, but his “Technical Reviewers” must have not been paid for their efforts, otherwise they would have probably paid more attention to detail.

4 Stars Well laid out
ASP.NET for Web Designers by Peter Ladka

Published by Peachpit Press

Reviewed by Larry Hess HuNTUG member

Just as his cover states “Are you sick and tired of all those 1,200-page technical manuals that seen to be written in a language only Martians could understand?” Mr. Ladka has created a manual that is designed for the beginner that’s not boring for the more experienced web developers. He shows both VB.Net and C# samples of all code snipping.

The book is divided into 4 main sections:

Part 1 ASP.Net Overview

1. ASP.Net Basics

2. Understanding Object-Oriented Programming

3. Scripting Basics

4. ASP.NET Pages

5. Understanding User Controls

Part 2 Designing with ASP.Net

6. HTML Server Controls

7. Web Server Controls

8. Web Form Validators

9. Displaying Data with Server Controls

Part 3 Advanced Features in ASP.Net

10. ADO.NET

11. State Management in ASP.NET

12. Form-Based Security in ASP.NET

13. XML in ASP.Net

Part 4 Appendixes

A. Installing the .NET Framework

B. Compiling Custom Objects

For the beginner the flow of the book takes the reader through the steps of designing their first web site with the standard “HELLO WORLD” approach, with each chapter building on the previous chapter information.

For the more experienced web developer the reader can jump in any chapter and get the information needed in that area. This is one of the best laid out and structured books’ I’ve read.

The web link to the code snipping was the hardest thing about the whole book.

3 Stars Just Okay
The book is okay in that it gives you a quick and dirty overview of ASP.NET. The code examples are okay but where the book falls short in that the author babbles a lot rather than actually discussing the subject.

5 Stars Excellent book
The writer of this book has a very laid back style and uses simple words to explain asp.net concepts. He uses a lot of examples and goes through them in detail. The book also has a very pleasant appearance and makes you want to read it. This is actually my first asp.net book that i’ve read and i liked it.

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