Product Description

Building on the revolutionary ASP.NET 2.0 release, ASP.NET 3.5 adds several key new developer features including AJAX, LINQ, and a new CSS designer in Visual Web Developer 2008. The dramatic reduction in code that developers realized from the more than 50 new server controls in ASP.NET 2.0 now allows developers the time to make their applications more interactive with AJAX, to work with data in their preferred language with LINQ, and to build visually attractive and consistent standards-based sites with CSS.

Professional ASP.NET 3.5 helps the experienced programmer put these new technologies into action. Greatly expanded from the original best-selling Professional ASP.NET 2.0, Professional ASP.NET 3.5 covers all the key technologies retained from 2.0 in new depth alongside the hundreds of pages of coverage of the important new 3.5 features. Written by 3 of the most well-known and influential ASP.NET developers who were highly praised by ASP.NET creator Scott Guthrie for their ASP.NET 2.0 books, Professional ASP.NET 3.5 is the book you’ll learn the language from and turn to day after day as you write web applications. And as always, Professional ASP.NET 3.5 features language examples in the book and in the code download in both C# and VB!

Key new coverage for ASP.NET 3.5 includes:

• Thorough coverage of how to implement ASP.NET 3.5 AJAX and the ASP.NET AJAX Toolkit
• An introduction to LINQ and many LINQ examples throughout the book side-by-side with the related SQL example to show you the differences between the two
• Enhanced coverage of XML use in ASP.NET including the new XML Schema Designer Add-on, LINQ to XML, LINQ for XML examples, and XSLTC.exe, a command-line XSLT compiler
• A new chapter on CSS design for ASP.NET and the Visual Web Developer CSS design tools
• A new chapter on the ASP.NET lifecycle and architecture best-practices
• Increased coverage of ASP.NET with SQL Server 2005 and Oracle as the databases
• Coverage of enhancing your ASP.NET applications with Microsoft’s new Silverlight for stunning video and animation uses
• Coverage of Scott Hanselman’s famous productivity tool picks for developers to help make you a more productive ASP.NET developer
• Updated coverage of migrating applications for previous ASP.NET versions

Key coverage retained and improved from the ASP.NET 2.0 book:

• The idea of the server control and its pivotal role in ASP.NET development
• How to create templated ASP.NET pages using the master page feature
• Techniques for debugging and handling errors
• Ways to package and deploy ASP.NET applications
• How to retrieve, update, and delete data quickly and logically
• How to implement the cultures and regions features to localize your web site into multiple languages for different visitors
• An understanding of how to use and extend the provider model for accessing data stores, processes, and more
• How to keep track of your application's performance and health with monitoring tools

Who this book is for

This book is for experienced programmers and developers who are looking to make the transition to ASP.NET 3.5.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3660 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1704 pages

From the Back Cover
Professional ASP.NET 3.5 In C# and VB

ASP.NET 3.5 brings the power of Visual Studio 2008 along with the multitude of language improvements in C# 2008 and Visual Basic 2008 as well as powerful new technology called LINQ, together with the ASP.NET 2.0 Framework you already know and love. Combine all this with the release of IIS 7.0 and its new managed code request processing pipeline, and you have a truly revolutionary leap forward in web application development.

ASP.NET 3.5 also brings with it new server controls, like the ListView and theincredibly flexible GridView. It also includes new advancements in AJAX technologycombined with the new JavaScript debugging features in Visual Studio 2008. Greatly expanded from the original best-selling Professional ASP.NET 2.0, this new edition adds hundreds of pages and dozens of code samples so you'll be prepared to put these new technologies into action.

What you will learn from this book

• The concepts underlying the server control and its pivotal role in ASP.NET development

• How to create templated ASP.NET pages using the master page feature

• How to work with data from enterprise databases including SQL Server

• Ways to debug, package and deploy ASP.NET applications, monitor their health and performance, and handle errors

• How to retrieve, update, and delete data quickly and logically using LINQ with side-by-side examples comparing LINQ to existing techniques

• How to localize your web site in multiple languages for a world-wide audience

• How to add AJAX capabilities to your ASP.NET applications

• How to integrate Silverlight interactivity into existing ASP.NET applications

• An understanding of how to use and extend the Provider Model for accessing data stores, processes, and more

• What freeware tools you need in Scott Hanselman's ASP.NET Ultimate Developer Tools appendix.

Who this book is for
This book is for programmers and developers who are looking to make the transition to ASP.NET 3.5 with Visual Studio 2008 and either C# 3.0 (2008) or Visual Basic 9 (2008).

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

About the Author
Bill Evjen is an active proponent of .NET technologies and community-based learning initiatives for .NET. He has been actively involved with .NET since the first bits were released in 2000. In the same year, Bill founded the St. Louis .NET User Group (www.stlnet.org), one of the world’s first such groups. Bill is also the founder and former executive director of the International .NET Association (www.ineta.org), which represents more than 500,000 members worldwide.
Based in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, Bill is an acclaimed author and speaker on ASP.NET and XML Web Services. He has authored or co-authored more than fifteen books including Professional C# 2008, Professional VB 2008, ASP.NET Professional Secrets, XML Web Services for ASP.NET, and Web Services Enhancements: Understanding the WSE for Enterprise Applications (all published by Wiley Publishing, Inc.). In addition to writing, Bill is a speaker at numerous conferences, including DevConnections, VSLive, and TechEd. Along with these items, Bill works closely with Microsoft as a Microsoft Regional Director and an MVP.
Bill is the Technical Architect for Lipper (www.lipperweb.com), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reuters, the international news and financial services company. He graduated from Western Washington University in Bellingham,Washington, with a Russian language degree. When he isn’t tinkering on the computer, he can usually be found at his summer house in Toivakka, Finland. You can reach Bill at evjen@yahoo.com.

Scott Hanselman works for Microsoft as a Senior Program Manager in the Developer Division, aiming to spread the good word about developing software, most often on the Microsoft stack. Before this he worked in eFinance for 6+ years and before that he was a Principal Consultant a Microsoft Partner for nearly 7 years. He was also involved in a few things like the MVP and RD programs and will speak about computers (and other passions) whenever someone will listen to him. He blogs at http://www.hanselman.com and podcasts at http://www.hanselminutes.com and contributes to http://www.asp.net, http://www.windowsclient.net, and http://www.silverlight.net.

Devin Rader is a Product Manager on the Infragistics Web Client team, responsible for leading the creation of Infragistics ASP.NET and Silverlight products. Devin is also an active proponent and member of the .NET developer community, being a co-founder of the St. Louis .NET User Group, an active member of the New Jersey .NET User Group, a former board member of the International .NET Association (INETA), and a regular speaker at user groups. He is also a contributing author on the Wrox title Silverlight 1.0 and a technical editor for several other Wrox publications and has written columns for ASP.NET Pro magazine, as well as .NET technology articles for MSDN Online. You can find more of Devin’s musings at www.geekswithblogs.com/devin.

Customer Reviews

This one Rocks... er... Wrox!!
Bill, Scott, and Devin really did a great job pulling together key topics in ASP.NET 3.5.
This book is huge... weighting in at 1,584 pages not counting the online resources and index.
It basically covers everything any developer would want to brush up on or learn completely from scratch. I was only looking to learn about caching for scaling issues( and it was a great chapter 23), but I learned about so much more. I recently got a new job as a Lead ASP.NET developer and the site I have to fix is a poorly written asp.net 2.0 site with lots of table adapter code, custom role management based on a nasty switch statement, custom logging based on a file and poor threading synchronization, etc. It's bad... not to mention all the ASMX stuff. :-(
Anyway, every time I flipped to a new section of the book it had a solution to the problem I was facing with the nasty 2.0 site. For instance, I can use LINQ to SQL to get rid of the table adapter code, role based management is obvious and should have been leveraged from the beginning, custom logging is cool because now I can leverage System.Web.Management.EventLogWebEventProvider which handles writing to the eventlog and database at the same time... for free! Not to mention System.Web.Management.SimpleMailWebEventProvider which handles emailing me about any warnings or errors. A few more chapters in the book that I really like are IIS7, Membership and Role Management (might as well be under the hood), and of course... LINQ.
LINQ to Objects, LINQ to XML, and LINQ to SQL. The book even ends with a chapter on Silverlight. Awesome stuff!

Theirs so much in this book that I couldn't possibly due it justice by listing it all here. All I can say is go pick it up if you're a Dev... or at least thumb through it the next time your in the book store. :-)

Uncharacteristically inadequate for a Wroth book.
I am about a third into this and have found the book to be somewhat disappointing relatively to other Wrox books. My areas of concern include the following:
- Lots of editing errors, spelling errors, and references to figures that are not what the descriptions suggest.
- Wrox book strengths are in their good examples. Most of the examples in this book are so trivial as to not demonstrate anything except perhaps syntax.
- Some topics are not explained beyond the listing of the features and settings. Could use more explanation of many of these features and settings, and exactly what they effect. (In fairness, its a big subject, and I am only 500 pages in so some topics may be explained in more depth in subsequent chapters.)

Comprehensive ... maybe, too much so
I use the Wrox Peer 2 Peer books -- such as this one -- basically as documentation. And in that vein, this is a strong entry. But if you're hoping to use this book to learn how to program, you're probably better off with the For Dummies series.

My copy of this book came directly from Amazon. Unfortunately, it was misbound, with an extra 150+ pages from Chapter 3 pasted into Chapter 8. It's little more than an annoyance, but keep in mind your copy may too be misbound when you get it.

Very little of the ASP.NET 3.5 language isn't covered by this book, and its primary benefit is its extensive documentation of LINQ, Microsoft's attempt to extend SQL to all data structures.

However, like most of the Professional books in the P2P series, this book is written in a way that if you do not already have a basic understanding of the control or language being discussed, you will likely be quickly left behind; this book simply describes the control, what it can do, some of its members and an example of how to employ it.

It doesn't generally get into qualitative discussions about which control is best to use in a given circumstance, or compare and contrast similar controls, or show how to use several controls to solve a given problem (i.e., provide "cookbook" examples).

Again, viewed as a technical reference, this book is as good, if not in some ways better, than MSDN's online documentation. Because it is grouped by task (e.g., data, controls, XML, membership / customization, etc.) this book often makes it easier for you to find a control than MSDN does, especially if you are unsure of which control to use or its name.

Viewed as a way to learn a language, it's not appropriate; it isn't structured to explain the approach of ASP.NET 3.5 or how to go about solving specific problems.