Even in the books preface, it says it's not a book for beginners. It's geared more toward asp.net developers that have at least dabbled in design using Visual Studio. The book is more or less one big practical example. I recommend it for the novice+ developers of ASP.NET.

This book is a great example of how to utilize VS 2005/Web 2.0 principles. There are a few components you can rip right out and utilize for other sites, it is a great addition to anyone's toolbox.

For those who want to understand and work with sophisticated ASP.Net 2.0 websites and are familiar with many of the detailed aspects of the technology side of things, this book is a terrific find. After having pushed through the details of each of the major areas of .Net and having become Microsoft certified, it was still a leap to make some valuable use of what the .Net can be used as in the real world. This is where to go next to pull the syntax and the quality techniques together.

The "Pro" books have there place. There is an immense amount of technical detail to .Net. It is quite an advantage to have it pulled together in a tour from beginning considerations to final implementation of a very significant website example. Quite appealing is that being so complete, it serves ably two other purposes: a core for adaptation to many other website ideas and a takeoff point to even more advanced techniques without reinventing the wheel.

As a recent college graduate I felt like I needed to know a little more about asp.net 2.0 before I started trying to code for a living. This book
blew me away with all it offered. Its simply the best book you can buy for learning to program using C# and Asp.net to create ntier architecture solutions.

Overall, I think the book was a good investment and well worth the read. It lives up to everything that the title implies. The only reason that I didn't give it five stars is that the links for downloading the code have been broken since I got the book (several weeks now). It would be very helpful to have the project open and be able to reference the code directly rather that having to page back to revisit code that has already been covered, but is now being referenced as the project progresses.

When I ran across the 1.1 version of this book, I had hoped there would be an update for 2.0. I love the idea of the book - a complete project run from beginning to end.

Marco's explanations and examples generally very good and I feel like he accomplished what it looks like he set out to do with the book. The project used in the book is a solid foundation for learning about ASP.Net 2.0 covering a wide range of topics.

Generally speaking, this book has gotten a lot of use, whether looking for something specific that Marco did, an idea on how I might do something, or comparing notes on my approach vs the one in the book.

I am giving the book 4 stars (instead of 5) simply because I think he could have covered a couple of things in a little more depth and still kept the flow and feel of the book overall.

The title of this book should be *Advanced* ASP.NET Problem - Design - Solution. This is not a book for those new to ASP.NET (at the ASP.NET page http://www.asp.net there is a section that includes ASP.NET books divided by beginner and professional; very useful). This book is for the developer who has programmed at least 6 or so websites with ASP.NET and wants to get into creating forums, mailings list, profiling, allowing the user to choose their own themes/skins, etc. The author assumes you have a firm handle on ASP.NET (also on HTML, CSS, Object oriented programming, C#, SQL and SQL stored procedures, n-tier design of web apps, etc) and quickly moves into advanced programming with ASP.NET. I would rate this book highly because it does cover a lot; it's just not practical for beginners or even intermediate level ASP.NET developers.

I bought this book because of the rave reviews. Once I began to read, however, I found it disappointing. Explanation and examples are vague and/or incomplete. The author should be forced to take a basic writing course before he is allowed to write anything more then a letter. Shame on the editors for letting this type of document out under the guise of instruction.

Some months ago Giuseppe Dimauro advised me about this book, saying that it is a relly good book and i bought it. I I have read it in two weeks.
What to say about the best book about Asp .Net 2.0 ?
Everyone will read it will understand something new.

Thanks Marco.

Thanks to Marco, I found this book helpful and recommend it to anyone who wants to understand the PRO ASP.net 2.0 profoundly.

Before start this book please read the following tips that can help you throughout the book:

1. If you are a beginner in ASP.net 2.0, try to read at least one ASP.net 2.0 book about ASP.net to be familiar what he does in this book. (Honestly, he did describe the controls, ... but people usually give up in reading when they cannot understand the materials)

2. DO NOT give up.
- If you do not understand what he says as a reader, just simply search the topic. For instance, I wanted to find out something in membership and roles and Marco just mentioned in one sentence and I could not understand it but after reading several articles I got it really great in just one simple sentence as he did in the book.

3. Read the chapters twice if you do not feel comfortable(I DID)
- Because of complexity that ASP.net 2.0 Pro has, some parts might be a little hard to find out, but keep reading and don't be worry, he usually explains the topics in several parts in the chapter, so you may find your answer at end of the chapter, even as a TIP which I did.

4. Download the CODES and practice it chapter by chapter
- One of the Wrox's forums user has done a great job by adding project's solutions all together chapter by chapter and it really helps if you want to practice it step by step.

This book contains alot of helpful information as well as errors. And...is this really a good way to organize your code????

Not much more I can add to existing reviews of this great book. One of the extremely few books that teach how to design and use a layered architecture when developing an ASP.NET application. The author provides good introductory reference to the basic components such as specific server controls and security providers, and more importantly, throughout the book you learn how to incorporate these components into a layered application architecture.

One word of warning -- it would definitely help to already have a good understanding of object-oriented concepts.

Coming from a background in Java/J2EE development and having cursory knowledge of the .NET framework, I am confident that this book will serve as an important reference as I delve into ASP.NET development.

This book demonstrates in a practical manner intermediate to advanced topics within ASP.Net. Even experienced ASP.Net developers will learn new techniques with the sample web site that is provided.

One possible area for improvement would be to make the book more of a step-by-step creation of the sample web site. Of course, it couldn't cover every minute detail but there were key things that you were left to figure out how they accomplished them on your own.

I look forward to the ASP.Net 3.5 version that is coming soon.

(I actually read this book about 2 years before reviewing it. I just realized last week when I loaned it to yet another colleague that since I've gotten so much use out of it I should review it)

My previous professional experience took me to develop (part of) an Enterprise Application based on ASP.NET 1.1 . They were hard days when I started with ASP.NET 1.x and docs were too few to understand all at first shot.
Finally, class by class, pages by pages, my Web Developing Experience with .NET grow up.
Now, that ASP.NET 2.0 is out, the Application I wrote has to be ported and I don't need a "Learn-from-scratch" book for this new version but something that brings you directly "to the point".
ASP.NET 2.0 Website Programming IS the book I was looking for!
Simply follow you from requirements to the solution going step by step and in a VERY CLEAR way (no "I skip this argument as you already know about" paragraphs present).
Everything you need to understand new features from ASP.NET 2.0 is in the book: the "The Beer House" site grow chapter by chapter and, at the end of the book you know ALL you need to port the knowledge in your daily work.
[...]

The book contains great details and real world examples that become useful on a daily basis as a C# .Net Developer. The book is structured in such manner that makes you feel you are watching a peer coding using best patterns, practices and all available controls for ASP.NET. I recommend this book for any intermediate-to-advanced programmer; the person must be truly familiar with OOP though, to fully grasp all concepts.

Nice implementation of a multi-tier approach; Business Logic Layer, Data Access Layer and the presentation layer; all nicely planned and implemented. Great job by Bellinaso!

Has a decent sample site, at leat you know you are learning from someone who has written a real world application.

First, this book is not aimed at the absolute beginner programmer, and it is not an exhaustive reference for asp.net 2.0 or C#. However, if you are an intermediate level web programmer with a good C# background, this book will be a nice addition to your library. Instead of writing alot of details about the book, I'd like to highlight areas that I found to be most helpful for me.
As the subtitle suggests (Problem-Design-Solution), this book very carefully and logically provides a practical approach to web development with asp.net 2.0. In the beginning module, the chapter "Planning an Architecture" was particularly helpful for me. Here, Marco "lays the groundwork for the rest of the book." From this chapter, I learned how to build a solid architectural foundation for an entire web site project. The chapter guides you through the planning process by helping you tackle important considerations such as: "Designing a Layered Infrastructure" (n-tiered design), "Choosing a Data Store", "Designing the Data Access Layer" (DataSet or Custom Entities, etc), "Designing the business logic layer", and User Interface considerations (presentation layer). This chapter makes you step back, take a deep breath, and plan out the project. So often programmers (me included) fail to plan appropriately for a given project. Instead we jump in head first to finish quickly only to find out that our efforts in post-production will far out-weight our production efforts.
Lastly, this book covers all sorts of web site projects. As I said before, its not an exhaustive reference for asp.net or C#, but its a great "go to" book when you need to be steered in the right direction. It certainly helps you ask the right questions. Anyone in web development professionally, in my opinion, should have this book. Thanks Marco.

Though reasonably well written it is really just a tutorial that I could have found as easily online. Note quite what I had hoped for in a book on Problem, Design and programming. I had hoped for better detail on the design approaches and methodologies than were gotten here.

In short, not a book that I expect to open a lot if ever again.

Like several others, I bought this book because of the glowing reveiws. I simply could not be more disappointed.
The book is not at all easy to follow, laden with errors, and backwardly stated sequences -- you are told to do something, and then told, after you do it, to do something else, first. Just think if this sort of instruction was all you had were you attempting to defuse an explosive device: "Now, cut the blue wire. You should, first, cut the red one, or the device will blow up in your face." Not the best way to sequence things, is it, as you are likely to be proceeding one step at a time.
The code, as presented in the book, is incomplete, despite the author's having said that you can, if you wish, type the code yourself (which I prefer to do for learning purposes) rather than simply downloading it. Additionally, the reader is told to employ menus in Visual Studio to access selections that simply are not there.
Worst of all, the book presupposes a level of expertise on the part of the reader such that it comes across in actuality as one pro talking to and offering advanced-level suggestions to another pro. If, however, you do not as yet inhabit so lofty a level, you should know that the book presupposes that you already know and know well what you bought the book to learn.
The book is extremely verbose; seemingly, for every line of coding presented, there is page upon page of novel-like reading. This may work for some; others, however, prefer a straight-forward, concise, clear and hands-on approach. There is no teacher like experience, and material presented in a wordy, essay-like fashion does not readily invite follow-along, learn-as-you-do instruction, which is the most effective way to acquire a skill.
To those who found the book so favorable, I offer congratulations for having discovered a volume of information that has, according to their reviews, worked so well for them. I, however, simply do not happen to fall into that category, wish though I may I did, and am constrained rejoin those who must go on wishing that once, just once, a good, clear, concise, reasonably error-free and genuinely instructive book on C# & ASP.NET would make it to the market place. Until then, disappointment and frustration of the sort engendered by this book and the all too many like it will continue to make learning web programming much more difficult and time-consuming than it must be.

The author warnes that the book is not for beginner programmers or even pros who do not have ASP.Net experience. Unfortunately for me it was true - he is operating with subjects and concepts well beyond my level. Also the book is in [...] and I do my tinkering in [...]. But I open the book time to time to read some passages that always leave me in awe of this kind of expertise.

I strongly recommend this book to whom might be concerned in ASP 2.0 and not only, as it contains really interesting and useful stuff related to design and programming problems, it describes different perspectives and lets you choose. It is not keen on theory, one can learn a lot of things by doing. Even though when I started reading it I knew almost nothing about ASP, by the time I have finished it not only have I learned a lot of things, but I ended up with a website of my own, following the instructions Marco Berllinaso is giving. So, GOOD LUCK! This book is a must!

This book is awesome. It tells you how to set things up step-by-step, just what I needed since I am brand new to asp.net 2.0.

This books takes a different approach to many I've used; instead of being mainly a reference/code manual with various snippets that don't necessarily pertain to one another; this book uses a single, detailed, moderately complex web project as its focus, with each section building upon the last.

Depending on what you're looking for -- a indexed reference book vs. life cycle development book, you may or may not like it. If you need just the occasional isolated chunk of code, there are more appropriate titles available. However if you'd like to work on a front to back full-blown project to see how all the pieces fit together, this is a terrific book.

It covers all the key functionalities used by ASP.NET 2.0, and ties it both front end (GUI) and back end (SQL Server) development. I also like the author's focus on being highly object-oriented; his detailed level of discussion, and his designing of clear, scalable, 'real-world' application layers. It's a well-rounded, solid book.

i bought this book because of the positive reviews it recieved. unfortunately the entire book is fo C# developers, while im a VB only.
Though I have no use of the sample code cause its all in c (there's a VB version available for download on the net, but it is not officialy supported by the author), I am reading this book and thoroughly enjoying the general concepts he reviews.
Disregarding syntax, the book has very much theory and discussions of design problems which will be useful for any web developer. he actually does a very thourough job of explaining the different options you have for each major step in project development.
its only a shame there was no mention of the fact that its c only. a 0 star to amazon on that part.
i'll put it this way, would the book have been in VB i would have definitely recommended it.

It's rare that a software development book takes on such a light "story-like" structure but that's exactly what makes this book so unique.
Very informative - an excellent tool to "bring you up to speed" with changes from 1.0 to 2.0.

I'm very impressed about this book, even if I knew the author's skills. Every single piece of this book helps in architecting, designing and developing a complete ASP.NET 2.0 web site. It's definitely recommended for beginners, intermediate and advanced developers: everyone will surely learn something.

I am very impressed with this book, and have worked with a number of customers who have also found it extremely useful.

Marco's book differs from other programming books in that it doesn't attempt to provide an exhaustive reference of ASP.NET 2.0 features. Instead, he focuses the book around building a real-world end to end application and introduces and demonstrates how to use the key ASP.NET 2.0 concepts and features in the context of the application.

The result is a very readable book that provides a great deal of context about how ASP.NET 2.0 works, and how the different features integrate together. The result provides a reader with a much better grasp of the end to end structure of how applications are built, and can serve as a good roadmap to make progress in your knowledge and learning of ASP.NET.

I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone who understands the basics of how ASP.NET works already, and is looking for a good book to take them to the next level and really start to build applications with it.

I would have loved to have seen this book as a learning tool to programming the site. But in essence this book is more a means to identify potential design issues, and what the author thinks are good ways to go about doing things. I found it extremely hard to run the code, maybe a chapter by chapter breakdown of code would have been handy, but if i ever get stuck at some point, then i was lost. This book doesnt have the exact code and explaining what the code should do, and how it goes about doing it, so in essence, it was really a try to figure it out yourself kinda deal. I found it a mess.

This book has no peer. Rather than rehashing what MSDN provides or tossing out concepts without practices, this book offers what no other book does: a working oop model and the steps you take to create an enterprise level web site. It is, by far, the best tech book I've ever purchased.

I disliked this book. I expected more type an examples on how to fix some of the problems with coding.

I just finished reading this book from front to back, and it was the most worth while time investment I have ever put into development learning. Marco taught me so much, from the concepts of N Tier design to multi threading. There was simply to much to learn on the first go around for me, so I am re reading it while I build my own website based on his teachings.

I apologize for the cheesy review. As an ASP.NET web developer with seven months experience (and no real web development experience prior), and a plan to jump into ASP.NET development full time after college, this book was pivotal for me to learn intermediate to advanced development topics that no course on my college was going to teach. So I can say I was grateful for the opportunity to read it.

This book does have a few slight drawbacks. The first, as a reviewer already mentioned, was the sub par editing performance. The book has two typos that I can think of off the top of my head: aspnet_reg.exe misspelled (as previously mentioned by another reviewer), at the bottom of the paragraph on page 82 he uses ConfiguratonProperty when he should have used ConfigurationSection, and some others that have already been posted on his Errata webpage. The second drawback is that some of the n tier concepts he uses through the whole book probably could have been a little better explained. I had to study his DAL and BLL code for several hours before I knew how it all connected, mostly because his explanation in the book didn't fully explain it, and because this was my first exposure to 4 tier.

The two things previously mentioned don't put a damper on how much the book teaches. It only slows down the progress by a infinitesimal amount.

In summary: If you are interested in being a professional ASP.NET 2.0 Web Developer, this book is essential, and definitely stands above all other books in the genre as being the best.

I'd like to give Marco a personal thank you for writing the lastest book with the beer house sample. I have learned quite a lot, compared to other .net books. The concepts in this book work quite a bit better than the standard asp.net 2.0 books, where they discuss everything ASP.NET capable of, but give no real world implementation or design pattern. I have purchased 7 books on asp.net 2.0 alone, and wasted quite a bit of time reading through them. This book has given me more concrete knowledge and help building real applications for businesses than I ever could have found in the others.

If you manage or program ASP.NET 2.0 applications, and are looking for good OOP design ideas and use, this is a great book. Many folks can use ASP.NET, use the default microsoft tools that come with it, but rarely take that next step in building applications the correct way, with object oriented code.

I'm sure some people will download the beerhouse application elsewhere, but you really can't walk through the code and understand what he's doing until it's explained, if you are a beginner/intermediate developer.

Great great book.

-Jeremy

This is a fantastic book. The layout of each chapter and the book in it's entirety is exceptional. It doesn't go into too much details about specific content but rather gives the reader a greater appreciation for the website development process.

The book and the sample application are excellent. I rate it 5 stars but came close to 4 stars.

My rating almost lowered to 4 stars because I felt more information was needed on creating a new website based on the concepts detailed in the book. This is a book focused on how to build a comprehensive website, and provides sample code for such a site that actually works. It leaves out some crucial information, however, about some of the steps needed to create a new site based on the book concepts.

Experienced developers may discount the importance of the following problems, but without instruction on them, the book falls a bit short of its goals (only from 5 stars to 4, however.)

Problem 1:

A class library is used for a set of custom health management event handlers. Although the sample code references the class library correctly, no information is provided on how a user should set up the class library independently to make the appropriate references and to be referenced correctly from the web app.

Problem 2:

Some instruction should be given on how to successfully change from the sample namespace to a new user-defined namespace. A number of users have posted questions on this topic to the book forum which have not been addressed satisfactorily.

Primary recommendation:

The book forum is active and many problems (but not all) are addressed. However, there should be a better book website that consolidates and addresses issues raised by users. A great example of how to handle this is Rockford Lhotka's [...] site for his book "Expert ... Business Objects." He consolidates answers to user problems and provides a central point to address them (rather than having each reader search through forum topics to try to find the answer they need.) He also points to several user sites that expand on his original concepts. His community is extensive and very effective.

Thanks for a great book, and I look forward to improved infrastructure support.

I originally purchased this book to learn more about implementing ASP.Net 2.0's new Membership and Profiling features (Chapter 4), but then decided to work through it from the beginning. I'm glad I did. This book is exactly what I had been looking for, a tutorial that shows how to develop a database-backed website using ASP.NET 2.0 features. I had previously purchased 2 other books, "Murach's ASP.Net 2.0 web programming with C#" and "Beginning ASP.Net 2.0 E-Commerce in C# 2005", but found this one to be more valuable. The author does a superb job of showing how to build a full featured website. What I like about this book is that the author's writing is clear and his discussions are excellent, and the example website he builds throughout the book demonstrates sophisticated features. The author doesn't take shortcuts in building the sample site and doesn't leave the reader stuck figuring out the tougher things. As I worked through the book I just felt that I was learning from someone who really knows how to build these types of websites. Overall, I would say that if you are looking for a solid tutorial to show you how to build a full-featured, database-backed application in ASP.NET 2.0, I would highly recommend this book.