I found it very useful
This MSPress publication is an excellent resource and bridges a rather wide gap. There aren't a lot of books that have its goals, although I believe SitePoint and Wrox have some offerings. This is the best of what I've seen. I gave it 5 stars, although maybe 4.5 would be more accurate. I notice that several reviewers gave it fewer stars, but I think they expected a different type of book. It's more for people who are newer to the topic, or relatively light users, but who may have a little background in the subject. It's not exactly a hand-holder, but there is a safety net (no pun intended), and that accounts for its ability to cover a lot of material and still be an introduction. I used the earlier pre-dotnet version for a course I taught on web-database connectivity, and found it very helpful. Upon returning to this topic recently, I found the dotnet version also to be very useful.
I like this book partly because of its systematic approach and because it focuses on coding instead of the .net ide. A bonus for me, although probably not for more advanced users, is that it is based on Microsoft Access databases (others are mentioned, and of course much of the code is the same). This puts the entire book within the realm of usability by an average person who is more likely to have Access, a PC-based web server (like XP Professional), or a host that provides Access support with the lower-tier service plans. This is probably also one of the reasons that some reviewers don't like the book. There is a lot of emphasis on understanding the processes rather than being a cookbook. The author, Jim Buyens, introduces a topic, then walks through the main code snippets, and finally gives the whole code behind a page. You can download the code from his website, and it works fine (at least all that I have tried). That alone is worth it. Consider the very first chapter. In it, he provides something very useful right away: a web page that connects to a database and shows the entire contents, organized in a table. Because of the broad capabilities of the asp.net datagrid, this code can easily and rapidly be applied to other databases. Some of the other features include a nice photograph gallery, a section on forms and form validation, a full chapter devoted to updating databases through web forms (insert into...), and a very useful section on generating emails.
The book could use an update, since it was written maybe 5 years ago, and is focused on asp 1.0. But all the code still works and is highly useful. Hopefully, MSPress will spend one of their nickels and have it updated.
Tries to do too much and fails completely
This is a terrible book. It is neither good for learning ASP.NET or learning Web DB application development. The author is not all that knowledgeable about .NET. He makes some completely wrong claims like where he says roles are not used in forms based security or .NET can't do comparisons against null (he means DB field nulls but doesn't make that clear). A third of the book itemized code "the 17 steps to upload a file are..." Just padding. Put in the relevant code and refer to the source on the CD.
If you want to build web DB apps with ASP.NET and ADO.NET, first get a book on ASP.NET which will include some ADO.NET anyway, then, when you master that, get an ADO.NET book. And get a book on VB.NET or C#, whichever you prefer.
Misleading title
I was a little mislead with the title. I was expecting a help with a web-oriented database design. I was looking for info on secure design, user management, multi-language support, database clusters, etc...But it does not. Actually it only talks about databases in 2-3 chapters and those are on a real basic level (create tables in Access en simple SELECT statements).
All the other stuff is the use of visual studio, Visual Basic, how to drop components, etc.
I do NOT recommend this book to any one with some programming expercience. If you know a little VB, made basic ASP(.NET) pages and played around with Access a few times then this book will not teach you anything new. You will be more with this book: Microsoft Press book "ASP.NET programming with Visual C#.NET", ISBN: 0735619352. All my collegues (8) just loved it.
How ever if you have no to very little programming experience, new to dynamic webpages and still in the learning curve of (basic) database use. I would recommend this book.
--Wout
Web experience
* ASP 1.5 year
* ASP.NET 3 months.
Is a new edition due soon?
This was very helpful book, full of examples. I like the writer's style, which is concise and moves right ahead. However, I wish that Jim used an increasingly popular method to reference the code-- with colored numbers or something to help call out which line he was explaining. His explanations got bogged down a bit by the way he referenced his own code blocks. Visually beefing this up, would have been welcomed.I found his brief notes and tips to be useful advice- delivered from an experienced programmer to a beginning to intermediate coder. The majority of these were useful points. Authentiction and ADO stuff was good, but I needed more sources as well.
It took me some effort to find this MSPRESS edition. I do hope that MSPRESS hasn't discontinued this and that a new revision is in the works. Reccomended.
General introducting to web
It is a general discussion on setting up a web but very little on the web database programming.
