ASP.NET In a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

PRObooks

ASP.NETIn a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Forthose old-timers out there who remember the pre-Internet era, O'Reilly's Nutshellseries of books is the 21st century equivalent of Waite Group Press'prehistoric Bible titles. The second edition of O'Reilly's popular ASP.NETIn A Nutshell is even approaching the page count of those old Biblebooks. However, O'Reilly is a successful publisher that is keenly aware of itsprogrammer audience and has honed its author pool, smartly edited the contentto focus on what matters in the real world, and even optimized the book's trimsize to pack as much information in as portable a package as possible.

Thereare a lot of ASP.NET reference books circulating in the marketplace today, andseparating the wheat from the chaff can be a daunting task. I've been fortunateenough to read over a dozen ASP.NET reference and tutorial books throughout thecourse of my book-reviewing career, and I can honestly state that few approachthe concise quality of subject matter that this second edition provides. Theformat follows that of other O'Reilly Nutshell books, wherein thetechnology's libraries are analyzed in just enough detail to answer those quicklook-up reminders. Readers looking for an ASP.NET tutorial will not find ithere. Nutshell books are geared toward intermediate and advanceddevelopers who, like an English professor, occasionally rely on a largedictionary to look up the more esoteric constructs. In this respect, ASP.NETIn a Nutshell admirably succeeds.

Withnearly 1,000 pages of text, it could have been easy to get lost in had it notbeen for the Type, Method, Property, and Field Index preceding the book'sindex. However, what would have made this type of index even more valuablewould have been the inclusion of page number references next to the entries.Yes, it would have cluttered the list. But it would have saved readers fromhaving to cross-reference the location of these keywords in the main index.Perhaps one day when these reference titles are all in portable electronic form(yes, I know O'Reilly offers their Safari subscription-based online bookrepository, but that only works well in a continuously connected onlineenvironment), the pain of index-induced page flipping will go the way of thetypewriter. But for now, publishers will need to continue to strive to maketheir printed content look-ups as frictionless as possible.

The bookis presented in three parts: Introduction to ASP.NET, Intrinsic ClassReference, and Namespace Reference. The introductory section provides a quickrefresher of ASP.NET's facilities (configuration, data access, security, etc.).The Intrinsic Class Reference section details the various Http* classes(Context, Exception, Request, Response, etc.). The first and second sectionsprovide good detail and just enough of an example to drive the point home. TheNamespace Reference section consumes over half the book, listing every publicproperty, method, and event for each of the various System.Web.* namespaces.Each list is prefaced by a brief explanation of the purpose each class serves.The authors have obviously polished their instructional skills from the firstedition by distilling each description into the most important messagenecessary to convey. Not once did I experience fatigue or frustration whenreading these blurbs. Instead, my typical reaction was, "OK, got it."Conversely, I never experienced a "Eureka moment" where a new trick ortechnique was uncovered. The obvious reason for this is that Nutshellbooks are not structured to deliver this kind of unexpected reading experience.Those moments are reserved for O'Reilly's ASP.NET companion book ProgrammingASP.NET, 2nd Edition (http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/progaspdotnet2/).

I havealways been a fan of O'Reilly's enlightening library of technical titles, and Iam especially satisfied with this ASP.NET reference. Any serious ASP.NETdeveloper should buy this book if they haven't done so already.

- Mike Riley

Rating:

Title: ASP.NET In a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Authors: Andrew Duthie and Matthew MacDonald

Publisher: O'Reilly and Associates

ISBN: 0-596-00520-2

Web Site: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/aspdotnetnut2/

Price: US$44.95

Pages: 998 pages