This book has several good chapters but too simple on a few important chapters. It is a shame that the source code is neither included in a CD, nor downloadable from the publisher web site. Source code listing occupies a large portion of the book. The book also contains many "reference" sections that list members of classes without explaining them. Such references are simply useless.
Chapter 1 is the introduction of the book. It did a good job in pointing out the problems with asp.old and summarized the new feature of asp.net.
Chapter 2 contains the real meat of the book: asp.net page and controls. The chapter covers a lot of materials. Unfortunately, the explanation of concept is too simplified and it does not show any insight. The section that describes HTML control and server control simply lists all the controls and members without detailed comments on how to use them. The examples are too simple. The authors should really split chapter into multiple chapters and discuss each subject in detail. After all, this is the most important part of ASP.NET.
Chapter 3 discusses the ASP.NET tracing and debugging. The tracing portion is OK but the debugging portion is too simplified.
Chapter 4 discusses the state management and caching. This is a good chapter that clearly explains how things work. The examples are good.
Chapter 5 discusses configuration and deployment. The overall chapter is OK. The discussion on XCopy deployment is excellent and very useful.
Chapter 6 discusses web services. Unfortunately, this chapter is like chapter 2. It does not have enough depth on the discussion of such an important subject.
Chapter 7 discusses security. This is another good chapter with clear discussion and good examples.
Chapter 8 discusses the HttpHandlers and HttpModules. The discussion and examples of HttpModules are very good.
Chapter 9 discusses the user control and server control. This discussion of server control is OK but I hope the author will go into more depth on user control since it is important.
Chapter 10 discusses XML. This chapter has a few good examples. However, this chapter does not have nearly enough depth if XML is one of the three subjects listed on the title. Some of the XML technologies in .NET, such as XML Serialization, are not discussed at all in this chapter.
Chapter 11 discusses ADO.NET. Again, this chapter is too simply single ADO.NET is one of the three subjects listed on the title. The discussion on data adapter is too simple and strongly-typed dataset is not discussed at all.
In overall, the authors did a good job on some chapters but several most important chapters are too simple. Not making source code available is a disaster since the book has to use a large portion of 590 pages on code listing. Also, some reference sections of this book are useless. The book should give more room to in depth discussion on how things work, what is useful, what works and how. --Reviewed by Li C.
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