What would happen if you took the best minds among ASP developers and ask them to write chapters on their particular strong areas for a professional ASP book? Simple, you would get Professional Active Server Pages 2.0 from WROX. The book assumes you will make a separate effort to familiarize yourself with the concepts and more advanced syntax of the scripting languages, as well as SQL and its structures, but it does an excellent job of leading the wannabe, as well as the seasoned ASP developer, through all of the ASP fundamentals and most of its intricacies. The book is a tour de force text composed by gurus for gurus to come.
The book is a collaborative effort of presenting all there is to know about ASP and related issues. Of course, it fails to do the impossible, but in its nearly 1,000 pages you will find very exhaustive explanations and overviews of some of the more important aspects of ASP development. Needless to say, according to WROX tradition, the book is packed with great examples that match most of the frequently asked questions on the ASP lists. The book also includes two chapter length case studies with code covering both Legacy Component Reuse and E-Commerce. Bellow is a partial list of topics as well as of practical examples.
Professional ASP 2.0 is also a very useful tool for the experienced developer who wishes to upgrade their knowledge with the latest expansions introduced with the IIS 4.0 and the 3.1 scripting engines. One of the chapters is dedicated entirely to MS Transaction Server (MTS) and there is an eloquent explanation of the new concepts as well as features IIS 4.0 introduces else where in the text.
Unfortunately a few weaknesses make it less than a “bible”. The book devotes two chapters to ActiveX Data Objects (ADO). Although the two chapters are of great tutorial value to this complex topic, the organization of the section leaves much to be desired as far as a fair reference is concerned. Another reason for the book’s non-bible status is it attempts to cover issues that are less then central or not even related to ASP while surprisingly leaving out more essential topics. For instance the sections about Visual InterDev and building an On-line Community could have easily been sacrificed for coverage of some of the more advanced interfaces of ASP. The inclusion list should have contained:
Full CDO 1.2 library (heavy duty Collaboration Data Objects for the purpose of calendaring and other more advanced implementation)
Active Directory interfacing (ADSI, which is going to be the key new interface to everything in the new MS Windows)
RDS
Specifics about interfacing Office 97 COM objects.
This book is a must for every serious ASP developer and is an excellent choice in spite of its few weak points.
Partial list of topics outside of the scope of strictly ASP:
CDO (Collaboration Data Objects) for NTS (a subset of the more heavy duty CDO 1.2 Library)
E-mail integration
Integration of the Index Server into ASP
Visual InterDev database development
Extended explanation of ADO (ActiveX Data Object) for database interfacing
This 15 Seconds' issue contains source code and step by step instructions for creating a chat session using Active Server pages, HTML and a standard web browser. Also demonstrated is writing and reading of a file with an Active Server page. [Read This Article][Top]
This issue describes how to make a list server using Active Server, SQL Server, and Stephen Genusa's ASPMail Component. Included are source and instructions for adding the user to the list from a Active Server page, removing the user from the list via a Active Server page, and sending mail to the whole list. [Read This Article][Top]
A rewrite of part one of a four-part series on Active Server objects. A simple example of creating a Active Server Component in Visual Studio 5.0 using the Active Template Library 2.0. The example component retrieves the user's cookie, if not available issues a new 128-bit cookie. Included in the issue is the source code and step by step instructions. This issue has been rewritten to illustrate the use of Visual Studio 5.0 and ATL 2.0 in writing Active Server Components. [Read This Article][Top]
In this issue 15 Seconds implements a catalog site that is build with Active Server pages and SQL Server. Along with the implementation there is source code and a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of creating a catalog site that gets its content from a database. Included are pages for displaying products, creating a menu page, category page, and running a search across a database. [Read This Article][Top]
A complete discussion of the Last Modified header and the Expires header including the effect they have on Active Server page and various browsers. [Read This Article][Top]
