Special Edition Using Active Server Pages - Softcover

Johnson, Scot; Ballinger, Keith; Chapman, Davis Howard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0789713896 ISBN 13: 9780789713896

Publisher: Que Pub, 1997

Synopsis

An essential guide to creating powerful Web pages offers current information on the latest advances of Active Server Pages in relation to Transaction Server, the Personalization System, the Personal Web Server (with Windows 95), ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), and other systems. Original. (All Users)

About this title

From the Publisher:

This book will serve as both a tutorial and a reference. Each chapter builds on the previous chapters, thus expanding the reader's knowledge. Additionally, the material is organized in a way that the reader will be able to easily reference when they later have a question This book provides the reader with up-to-date coverage of what can be done with Active Server Pages. This includes coverage of Active Server Pages as they relate to Transaction Server, the Personalization System, the Personal Web Server (with Windows 95), ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), and much more

Unlike most of the competition, this book will assume more basic knowledge of VBScript and standard web page creation. This will allow the book to go farther and deeper into technical topics surrounding Active Server Pages

Most of the competitive books center on Windows NT and IIS. This book will expand the coverage to include using Active Server Pages on Windows 95 using the Personal Web Server

The technologies being used to create Web pages continue to evolve. This book presents the reader with an up-to-date look at how to create dynamic, personalized web sites for both business and personal use

This will be one of the first book to focus more on implementing Active Server Pages rather than on the theory behind working with Active Server Pages. This additional coverage will be seen in the 850+ pages (verses the closest competitor at less than 600 pages)

Includes new functionality available with the release of Microsoft's Internet Information Server 4.0

Covers creating Active Server Pages for Windows 95 with the Personal Web Server as well as for Windows NT 4 with IIS

Review:

Every technical book publisher has its own approach to gaining shelf space at the expense of its competitors. Que's approach is to release hefty, manly, studly 800+ page books that can simply crowd out other books on the same subject -- authors that anticipate producing a book that weighs less than 5 pounds need not apply to Que. Of course, there are very few programming topics where more is actually more, so to speak. But publishers have many tactics that can be used to bulk up a manuscript -- redundancy, white space, screen shots, trivial diagrams, cute icons, appendices that are recycled from Microsoft programming documentation, etc.

Given Que's track record, I was surprised to find that Using Active Server Pages is a pretty decent piece of work. The information is relatively accurate and the book exposes the reader to the full range of Active Server Pages programming issues, although the coverage of each topic is quite shallow. I get the impression that the authors don't have much practical experience with Active Server Pages and actual industrial-grade, production web sites. There are also chapters on Microsoft's new Transaction Server , Message Queue Server, and Management Console. These are not complete enough to be used as a guide to implementation, but at least help the reader to understand why these products exist and what they are good for.

This book would be a reasonable introduction to Active Server Pages for a reader with little or no programming experience but some understanding of simple databases and HTML. Technically sophisticated readers will be more satisfied with WROX Press's Professional Active Server Pages. -- Ray Duncan, Dr. Dobb's Journal -- Dr. Dobb's Journal

About this edition

• Publisher: Que Pub
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0789713896
• ISBN 13: 9780789713896
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 840