Scott Hanselman's Computer Zen - Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Special Edition coming in September

First time here? Check out the site's "greatest hits" or read a post from the archives. Feel free to leave a comment or ask a question, and consider subscribing to the latest posts via RSS or e-mail. Thanks for visiting!

Do you Tweet? Follow me on Twitter @shanselman or learn how to use Twitter!

Latest Tweet:

« Scott Hanselman: Developer Productivity ... | Main | Hanselminutes Podcast 25 - Scott's .NET ... »

Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Special Edition coming in September

The secret's out. A 'special edition' (updated second edition) of Professional ASP.NET 2.0 is coming out in September.

It's a freaking beast. If you didn't get the book when it came out last year, now's the time to pre-order this one...

What's the difference between the first one and the Special Edition? About 300 pages of new content. It's about 1650 pages now, enough to beat someone up, if you use the Hardcover. And the Hardcover is only $37.79 to preorder the last time I checked at Amazon. Although, you could hurt someone with the Wrox Box.

Bill Evjen lead the charge on much of this new content, with Devin and I adding missing and/or new content in dozens of places throughout the book. There's an excerpt of the new section on the FileUpload Server Control up at Wrox.com.

Here's a brief list of what's updated and new in this new edition.

FOUR completely new chapters:

Introduction to the Provider Model
Extending the Provider Model
Localization
Instrumentation

TWO new appendixes:

Migrating ASP.NET 1.x Projects
Using Atlas

...and dozens of additions throughout all the existing chapters, including:

Class Designers and Open Test Bench
Build providers
A More Complex Callback Example
Uploading multiple files from the same page
As an example, in Chapter 11, DataBinding in ASP.NET 2.0 these changes:

Added SqlDataSource Configuration Wizard to add optimistic concurrency
Added SqlDataSource Events, Using the SqlDataSource with Oracle, AccessDataSource Control
Added GridView events that fire when the data binding occurs
Added Using the TemplateField Column in the GridView Control
Added Using the TemplateField's EditItemTemplate
Added Expressions and Expression Builder

Using Oracle as Your Database with ASP.NET 2.0
Added Generating Custom XML from SQL 2005

That's the list up through about the first 1/2 of the book...there's a pile more...

And there's an added DVD which is the Visual Studio 2005 Professional 180 day trial, and there's an added CD which contains more than 1000 pages of selected chapters from other Wrox .NET 2.0, ASP.NET 2.0, VB 2005, C# 2005, and SQL Server books.

Tracked by:
"Detailed TOC and change list for Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Special Edition" (Jim... [Trackback]

Wednesday, July 19, 2006 1:48:09 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)

I will certainly order a copy of the new book. I have used and enjoyed the current version. One area that I noticed that neither your book or any other I have been able to find addresses the issues with using a data access layer in ASP.NET. You touch on using precompiled business objects, even give an example of how to compile an assembly from the command line. But every web app I have ever worked on has required resuse of complex business objects represented in assemblies, usually as class libraries. Numerous web articles discuss creating a DAL, and the pro's and con's about directly consuming datasets or datatables or using intervening objects etc.

How about some of the meat instead of the fluff? For instance, when and where should one instantiate a business object if they are not using the APP_CODE directory. How about the issues with strongly typed datasets created in your business object, and consuming them from more than one web page? Do you instantiate these beasties for every call? Should you initialize your layer once? What about in a server farm environment? Come on, tackle the tough stuff! I would pay a lot more for a book that dealt with more real world issues that effect application design.

Your book was and is great as far as it goes, but we really need a book that tackles these issues. I have read "ASP.NET 2.0 Website Programming Problem-Design-Solution" by Marco Bellinaso and he comes close but we need more!! Any recommendations?

Cheers,

Bob Porter