Beginning Active Server Pages 3.0

Author: David Buser, John Kauffman, Juan T. Llibre, Brian Francis, Dave Sussman List Price: $39.99 Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price ISBN: 0764543636 Publisher: Wrox (11 July, 2000) Edition: Paperback Sales Rank: 2,626 Average Customer Rating: 4.55 out of 5

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Customer Reviews

When you begin reading and learning the content is simply too much. As you progress you find yourself seeking other resources for "filler" information.

I didn't realize until I grew frustrated with the book how effective it was. I had gone from a complete beginner to someone who could put together access driven web applications and I didn't even realize how far I had come.

I now have over 30 programming and database books that is use as resource guides for particular problems etc. Each book helps me get past a certain problem/hurdle. Like a lawyers library I couldn't proceed without it.

That is simply the nature of programming these days. We beginners often underestimate the amount of knowledge expert programmers have. The trick is to take what we can from each resource. In order to progress we must keep adding to the resource collection.

This book is the staple of my collection. I refer to it almost daily and as my knowledge base expands I find myself making better use of it.

So its a must for the beginner in my opinion. Whether you just want a foundation to take free script from ASP Programming sites, edit it, and add it to your projects or you are looking to chase a programming degree or career this book gets you rolling.

"When I first started to study Chinese my tutor ... gave me a Chinese-English dictionary, a Chinese grammar book and a primer. But he placed all of these books in a basket and said they were not to used until the next week. In the first week he instructed me just to listen and and memorize some phrases. That week, I had to accept on faith the content, sentence structure, pronunciation and grammar. But by Friday I could at least walk into a Chinese restaurant, order a bowl of rice and pay for it."

That pretty well desribes how this book progresses. The authors start you off with some simple ASP and then build on that in the later chapters. I basically went chapter by chapter and did all of the "Try It Out" projects. By the end, I could understand ASP code and I was able to adapt it to the project I was working on.

The book is rather wordy, but not in a boring way. The authors' target audience is people with almost no programming experience, and I think they do a good job explaining things to that audience. I had done some web coding before, so I usually skimmed the text to look for the techniques I was not familar with. As I worked on my real-world project, I would refer back to the book when I wasn't sure how to do something.

I like the book because it has lots of hands on examples, right up to a full blown web application called "Wrox Classifieds". It's easy to look up a specific ASP technique and get right to the explanation of how it works and how to code it. An added benefit are the Appendices, which include a complete description of the ASP 3.0 and ADO 2.5 Object Models and a VBScript reference. If that's not enough information, they have a website with a messgae board on which you can ask specific questions and get answers from more experienced ASP coders.

My only criticism of the book is the "support" provided by the publisher. Wrox was sold to Wiley a couple of years ago in a bankruptcy proceeding. You are supposed to be able to open a ticket with their technical support if you have problems getting something to work. I tried to open a ticket, and all I received was an e-mail from Wiley saying they weren't sure if they would support the book but they would get back to me. They never did.

That experience, however, has not dampened my enthusiasm for this book or other books by Wrox.

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