The most up-to-date and comprehensive introductory ASP.NET book youll find on any shelf, Beginning ASP.NET 1.1 in C# guides you through Microsofts latest technology for building dynamic websites. This book will enable you to build dynamic web pages on the fly, and it assumes only the most basic knowledge of C#.
Beginning ASP.NET 1.1 in C# provides exhaustive coverage of ASP.NET, guiding you from your first steps right up to the most advanced techniques, such as querying databases from within a web page and performance-tuning your site. Youll find tips for best practices and comprehensive discussions of key database and XML principles you need to know in order to be effective with ASP.NET. The book also emphasizes the invaluable coding techniques of object orientation and code behind, which will start you off on the track to build real-world websites right from the beginning&emdash;rather than just faking it with simplified coding practices.
By the time youve finished the book, you will have mastered the core techniques and have all the knowledge you need to begin work as a professional ASP.NET developer.
A well-written jack-of-all-trades/master-of-none book
I didn't know much about ASP.NET and C#, although I have done some junior-level programming projects with other languages. Based on rave reviews, I originally tried Jesse Liberty's Programming ASP.NET book, but I could not digest that book due to its lack of gradual buildup, lack of connecting ideas, and obscure examples.
Matthew MacDonald's book "Beginning ASP.NET 1.1 in C#: From Novice to Professional," on the other hand, is very well-suited for a beginning programmer. As with many other beginner's language books, he covers the C# language syntax and common ASP.NET controls. However, he covers advance topics such as state management and caching.
He also covers ancilliary topics such as Visual Studio explanations, files that make up a VS Solution or project (i.e. what is web.config?), and setting up your computer to run ASP.NET.
He writes in a way that is easy to follow, and his examples are not obscure, but straightforward. He focuses primarily on the chapter at hand, so you get the sense that he is teaching you in discrete steps. Each subsequent chapter, he adds on top of what you know from previous chapters. His code examples and explanation remain within the context of the current or previous chapters. He doesn't use code in his examples that does not pertain to the current or previous chapters, nor does he talk about things in later chapters other than an informative cross-referencing parenthetical (i.e. "For more information about this topic, see Chapter X").
I also like his diagrams on the ADO.NET model and the .NET architecture. These diagrams won't give you in-depth information, but they illustrate how the parts work at a high level. I didn't get this in other books, including the O'Reilly ones.
Because of his explanations, for example, I finally understand the basic ADO.NET operational model. Set a Connection object, then Set a Command object, and then choose between a DataReader object (for read-only data) or a DataAdapter object (disconnected read-write data). The O'Reilly Programming ASP.NET book and other ASP.NET books don't explain this clearly and often used DataAdapter or DataReader interchangeably in their examples.
Altogether, his writing and delivery style is very well-paced to me. I am not overwhelmed.
There are few downsides to this book. After a certain point in the book, he stops giving full example code, but he tells you why he is doing this (you can download the full code from his website). He only highlights the core code needed to demonstrate the topic. I still wish he used the full code examples in later chapters, because I generally type the code to get practice. By downloading code, I don't absorb the material as easily. Of course, that would make the book longer.
As for the criticisms of SQL injection by other reviewers, I agree that it is bad, but this is also a beginner's book. I'm sure he chose this format to teach the idea of database access and manipulation. However, he does talk about SQL injection attacks on page 431 in the ADO.NET access section. He discusses the topic for about a page, so it doesn't provide much detail, but it does serve as a cautionary note to the reader. I'm sure you can read other books to get more information on how to secure your web form from attacks.
Being a beginner's book, he covers a lot in the 1,000 pages in a jack-of-all-trades style, but it probably won't cover issues veteran programmers might be most interested. In fact, veteran programmers will find this book superfluous in some chapters, such as a 50-page tutorial on the C# language. For C# beginners, the chapter on the C# language may not be enough. You're not going to find all the answers here, but there is definitely enough information to get you started and for further research.
Lastly, I've contacted the author a few times with questions about the topics in his book, and he answered them in a friendly way. It's nice having an approachable author, even though I know the author has a busy schedule.
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