Visual Basic Developer's Guide to E-Commerce with ASP and SQL Server

The guide shows how to build an online CD store (with some clothing, like T-shirts, thrown in for good measure) by combining ASPs using VBScript and ADO for calling SQL Server stored database procedures on the back end. Instead of learning about every whistle and bell, you find out what works specifically for a small online store. Early chapters let you design the database and get up and running with a workable browser interface, including a shopping basket, order history, and tax and shipping computations. Later chapters add administrative and management functions for changing what products are available (among other options). In its final version, the Web site gets support for cross-promotions and putting products on sale.

Although the solution doesn't take advantage of MTS/COM+ on the middle tier, you can expect good results with this approach because of stored procedures. The book also does a good job of planning for scalability with sections on Web server architecture and performance tuning. For more advanced development, there's also a thorough tour of more advanced options for e- commerce on the Microsoft platform centering on Site Server, Commerce Edition (with its customizable pipeline model). The text closes with a consideration of the sample stores available within this package.

E-commerce on the Windows server platform can certainly be daunting. Visual Basic Developer's Guide to E-Commerce with ASP and SQL Server is easy to understand, and it delivers an approachable tutorial on practical and successful development using some of the most important Microsoft tools. It will definitely help you build sites that work for real-world online commerce. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered: Tutorial for building an e- commerce site, ASP and VBScript basics, Microsoft Site Server, Commerce Edition, and tools, SQL Server basics and stored procedures, Visual Basic 6, security and certificates, database tables for e-commerce, server farms and scalability, load balancing, the store foundation and basic user interface, shopping basket, checkout, taxes and shipping, administrative screens, promotions, cross-selling and up-selling, managing sales, the order processing pipeline, overview of Site Server sample stores, best practices and scalability.