Book Review: Murach's ASP.NET 3.5 Web Programming with VB 2008

Murach’s ASP.NET 3.5 Web Programming with VB 2008 by Anne Boehm rides on the success of Mike Murach and Associates’ previous bestselling ASP.NET books. The latest edition is now a whopping 1000-page book—slightly thicker than the previous editions. The book provides guidance on creating data-driven web applications using ASP.NET 3.5 in Visual Studio 2008. As the title of the book implies, all code samples are in Visual Basic.

The book generally targets beginner to intermediate-level ASP.NET developers. If you aren’t familiar with the paired-pages format of Murach’s books, the thickness of the book might look daunting at first sight but fret not; the paired-pages format alternates the pages with core training content and summarized content for easy reference. There are exercises at the end of each chapter too.

I find the paired-pages arrangement quite unique for a book and I’ve always been a fan of this format. Most importantly, it reinforces the understanding of the material conveyed through the book. Now, let’s plough through this book and see what it has to offer.

The book is divided into five sections comprising a total of 29 chapters.

Section 1 is designed to get readers off to a fast start in ASP.NET. The chapters in this section show readers how to leverage Visual Studio to design and code both one-page and multi-page data-driven ASP.NET web applications. It also shows how to test and debug web applications using Visual Studio.

Section 2 presents other related skills most likely encountered in ASP.NET application development. That includes essential HTML and CSS skills, server and validation controls, state management, master pages (including the new nested master pages support in Visual Studio), site navigation, and themes.

Section 3 deals with data access and what ASP.NET 3.5 has to offer in this area. That includes using data sources, and some bound controls that are designed to work with data sources like the ListView and DataPager controls. There is also guidance on using object data sources and the new LINQ (Language-Integrated Query) data sources.

Section 4 equips readers with the skills required to develop professional e-commerce web applications. This section covers SSL security, user authentication and authorization, user profiles for personalization, wizard controls, sending email from within an application, web parts, ASP.NET AJAX 3.5, and application configuration and deployment.

Section 5 shows readers how to develop user controls, custom server controls, and ASMX web services.

The source code and databases for all the applications presented in the book can be downloaded from the publisher’s website. The enhanced appendix now includes a guide on using IIS7 under Windows Vista.

As in the previous editions, I find the chapters to be logically organized and well written. The technical breadth and depth of this book is just right for those who want to get off to good jumpstart into ASP.NET 3.5 programming.

I like the fact that a single running sample e-commerce application has been featured throughout the book and that it provides readers with a good data-driven web application example to relate to, instead of multiple unrelated code samples as in some other books. Not surprisingly, the sample application is now expanded to cleverly incorporate the latest ASP.NET 3.5 features like ListView, DataPager, LINQ and LinqDataSource, and AJAX.

I also like the fact that the author has pointed out the caveats to look out for and the workarounds to take when dealing with a particular feature in ASP.NET. For example, there is a mention of the compatibility issues of the UpdatePanel control with certain server controls, and solutions to the “infamous” back button problem which would have saved hours of frustration for beginning ASP.NET developers.

Whilst there is no doubt I like the book, I would have preferred if the chapter on web services had touched on the newer WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) way of developing web services instead of using the ASMX method. It would have been also nice if the chapter on deploying an ASP.NET application also teaches how to deploy the application database on a remote server—given that Visual Studio 2008 now also includes the new SQL Server Database Publishing Wizard. Of course, there’s much more to explore in the latest incarnation of ASP.NET, VB, and the Visual Studio tool but in all fairness, that’s beyond the scope of this book.

All in all, I’m very impressed with the latest edition of this book and I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone who wants to get a fast start to ASP.NET 3.5 web development with VB. Even if you're an experienced ASP.NET developer, this book would be a great addition to the library.

- Jason Ong
August 2008

Related Resources

• Amazon.com reviews / Buy this book
• Other ASP.NET/Visual Basic .NET books