Expert ASP.NET 2.0 Advanced Application Design

Expert ASP.NET 2.0 Advanced Application Design Book Review Conclusion

Dave Hayden — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 13:47:00 GMT

Expert ASP.NET 2.0 Advanced Application Design ( Apress, Amazon ) by Dominic Selly, Andrew Troelsen, and Tom Barnaby takes a look at the nonfunctional requirements ( performance, scalability, security, maintainability, etc. ) of your distributed ASP.NET applications and discusses various architectural designs, best practices, and technology choices in each tier of the application.

The book is a welcoming 450 pages that delivers a lot of punch for it size by jumping right into each topic, focusing on fundamentals, discussing best practices, and highlighting specific new features in ASP.NET 2.0. If you are looking for a book that hits the highlights from an architectural and best practices focus to either help round out your knowledge or see things from another viewpoint, this book is a good fit. If you are looking for more of a reference manual or book on the basics of web development and ASP.NET, this book shouldn't be your first choice.

The book is broken up into 3 parts, focusing on each tier of a 3-tier ASP.NET application:

Part I - ASP.NET 2.0 Internals

This part begins by introducing the various nonfunctional requirements of interest and the various components and technologies within each tier that could play a role in your distributed architecture. It immediately then jumps into the fundamentals of ASP.NET: HttpApplication lifecycle and events, page model and events, a very brief look at HttpModules and HttpHandlers to extend ASP.NET, new compilation options and role of partial classes in code generation, exhaustive look at the ViewState and changes from 1.x, and last a little about client scripting.

I think most developers will be able to handle the material in this part and appreciate the information. It will either be a good refresher containing specific highlights of ASP.NET 2.0 for the experienced developer, or a good re-introduction to the object-oriented nature of ASP.NET for the new developer.

Part II - .NET Middle Tier Solutions

This part starts off with the highlights of the new authentication and authorization security features and controls in ASP.NET 2.0, which is suitable for everyone. It discusses membership, roles, and the new UI controls.

It then goes into the most advanced topics in the book: SOA and web services, enterprise services, and a preview of Windows Communication Foundation. The discussions on web services are excellent. The other discussions are more than a light read and more suitable for experienced developers.

Part III - Data Access Layer

Part III provides an excellent overview of ADO.NET with good coverage of best practices. It then introduces the Enterprise Library Data Access Application Block 1.0, which is coming a little late in the game in my opinion. Last, it provides a good introduction to the new System.Transactions namespace.

Conclusion

Overall, I really enjoyed the book and recommend it when you need more best practices, architectural design guidance, and a real world feel that you often don't get from the reference books.

My only disappointment was the lack of thorough coverage on state managment and caching. The discussions on viewstate and a bit on output caching is hardly enough for such a book. Rather than make the book longer, the authors could have removed the parts on the Enterprise Library Data Access Application Block 1.0 and declarative data sources ( ObjectDataSource, SqlDataSource, etc.). This is my opinion, however, and others may appreciate the introduction of Enterprise Library DAAB and the declarative data sources.

Source: David Hayden ( ASP.NET Developer )

Expert ASP.NET 2.0 Advanced Application Design Book Review - ASP.NET 2.0 Internals

Dave Hayden — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 18:19:00 GMT

Last night I completed Part 1 of Expert ASP.NET 2.0 Advanced Application Design, called ASP.NET 2.0 Internals.

ASP.NET 2.0 Internals

This section is about 150 pages long and packed full of really good information on semi-advanced topics in ASP.NET 2.0. It consists of the following 4 chapters discussed below:

Chapter 1 - Overview of .NET Application Architecture

This chapter briefly discusses different application architectures for ASP.NET applications. If you are more of a developer / coder and not much into architectural design, this chapter may bore you a bit with discussions of architectural components / services and various nonfunctional requirements ( performance, scalability, etc.). Don't let this chapter scare you, however, if you are more into the nuts and bolts, because the next 3 chapters will provide more technical information and code.

Chapter 2 - The ASP.NET Request Pipeline

A short but effective chapter introducing the application lifecycle, events and the good 'ol Global.asax file. It digs further by describing how to inherit from HttpApplication and plug into application events by writing HttpModules. Last, it discusses the role of HttpHandlers in ASP.NET and how to create one and configure IIS to use it.

Chapter 3 - Page Object Internals

Chapter 3 starts with an introduction into the new compilation models and the use of partial classes used by Visual Studio 2005 for code generation. It then discusses the control tree of a webform and the various events fired by the page and how and why you might use them in your applications.

Chapter 4 - ViewState and Scripting

This chapter discusses the role of ViewState in your applications and new features in ASP.NET 2.0 that overcome problems in ASP.NET 1.x

Cross-Page Postbacks
Optimized Serialization
Control State
Post-Cache Substitution

as well as using LosFormatter to save and load the viewstate to a database as opposed to a hidden field on the page.

The part on scripting discusses the various ways of registering client script as well as the use of Out-of-Band Callbacks.

Summary

Most intermediate to advanced developers will be familiar with the information presented and think of it as a good re-introduction / refresher to the topics. New ASP.NET developers will learn a ton of good internal information in only a few pages that will round out their knowledge quite nicely. HttpModules are a must learn in my opinion as well as the lifecycle and event model for both HttpApplication and pages. The part on ViewState provides an excellent comparison-contrast of the ViewState related technologies in 1.x and how they are improved in 2.0.

Expert ASP.NET 2.0 Advanced Application Design Related Posts:

Source: David Hayden ( .NET Developer )

Expert ASP.NET 2.0 Advanced Application Design Book Review - Data Access Layer

Dave Hayden — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 12:50:00 GMT

As mentioned in an earlier post, Expert ASP.NET 2.0 Advanced Application Design by Apress - Book Review Introduction, Expert ASP.NET 2.0 Advanced Application Design showed up on my doorstep the other day so I thought I would review the 3 different sections in the book. Because I have been talking a lot about ADO.NET 2.0 recently, I decided to jump to the last part of the book, Data Access Layer, first and then go back to the other sections later.

Part 3 - Data Access Layer

Part 3 of Expert ASP.NET 2.0 Advanced Application Design discusses the Data Access Layer in your ASP.NET distributed applications. It is separated into 3 different chapters, which I have described below.

Chapter 10 - Managed Providers of Data Access

This chapter provides an overview of the following:

Rational for choosing a DataReader or DataSet in your applications.
Encrypting connection strings and real-world connection pooling.
Use of Stored Procedures as a means for better performance and security.
Reasons for choosing ExecuteReader, ExecuteNonQuery, and ExecuteScalar.
Implications of using Dynamic Sql, Parameterized Queries, and string concatentation in queries.
Managed Provider Factories in ADO.NET 2.0 and writing database agnostic code in your applications.
Usual methods of optimistic concurrency in SQL Server.

This chapter is extremely well written, providing a nice overview of ADO.NET that focuses on best practices and the rational for choosing one solution / technology over another in your applications. It highlights the “important“ improvements in ADO.NET 2.0 that mean something to the intermediate and advanced developer. It packs a lot of best practices and the rational for such practices in a few pages by not wasting a lot of time and space on trivial discussions and reference material. I can't recommend this chapter enough.

Chapter 11 Data Access Layer Services

This chapter provides an overview of the following

Declarative Data Sources ( SqlDataSource, ObjectDataSource )
SQL Cache Dependencies
Microsoft Enterprise Library Data Access Application Block 1.0
Developer's survey of SQL Server 2005 CLR Integration, Service Broker, XML

This chapter is more of a hodge podge of ideas. I, personally, could have done without the discussion of data sources and the “old“ Enterprise Library Data Access Application Block, but others may enjoy the introduction. The sections on SQL Cache Dependencies is excellent, and the SQL Server 2005 is indeed a survey of the topics just to familiarize yourself with SQL Server 2005.

Chapter 12 - Transactions

This chapter provides an overview of the following

Transactions in 1.x
System.Transactions and the Lightweight Transaction Manager

This chapter is only about 15 pages long, but provides a good introduction to the new System.Transactions namespace in ADO.NET 2.0. The new transaction support in ADO.NET 2.0 is a must read for developers inolved with distributed transactions.

Conclusion

Expert ASP.NET 2.0 Advanced Application Design Part 3, Data Access Layer, provides a solid overview of using ADO.NET in your data access layer. The writing style is good, and aside from Chapter 11 which is more of a hodge podge of ideas, the chapters flow very well. I enjoyed the focus on best practices and real-world ideas.

One very important thing missing is a chapter putting all of these ideas together to create a data access layer. The book introduces all the parts of a data access layer but misses out on the opportunity to bring these parts together into an actual data access layer that demonstrates them working together in harmony.

Source: David Hayden ( .NET Developer )

Expert ASP.NET 2.0 Advanced Application Design by Apress - Book Review Introduction

Dave Hayden — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 13:33:00 GMT

Expert ASP.NET 2.0 Advanced Application Design by Apress ( Apress, Amazon ) showed up on my doorstep yesterday. Any book that manages to work in both “Expert” and “Advanced” in the title deserves a look ;)

It is a nicely-sized 450 pages with the following 12 chapters:

Part 1. - ASP.NET 2.0 Internals

Overview of .NET Application Architecture
The ASP.NET Request Pipeline
Page Object Internals
ViewState and Scripting

Part 2 - .NET Middle Tier Solutions

.NET 2.0 Security
SOA in .NET: Web Services
Enterprise Services
Hosting and Communications
Windows Communication Foundation

Part 3 - Data Access Layer

Managed Providers of Data Access
Data Access Layer Services
Transactions

I read part 3 last night, Data Access Layer, since I have been recently talking about changes in .NET 2.0 with respect to data access and transactions:

Part 3 also mentions the Enterprise Library Data Access Application Block for data access and transaction management. It is a brief introduction, maybe about 10 pages, but it is still interesting to see coverage of it in an advanced ASP.NET 2.0 book. Unfortunately, it has to talk about the .NET 1.1 version because the .NET 2.0 Version has yet to be released.

During the next week I will provide a review of each Part ( 1, 2, and 3). I will start my review with Part 3, Data Access Layer, since I already read it. There will be a bit of overlap from my recent posts, but a good reinforcement of best practices never hurt anyone, especially ME!

Posted by David Hayden ( Florida .NET Developer )