Beginning Active Server Pages 3.0 (ISBN 1861003382)

Book Description:
Active Server Pages 3.0 is a scripting tool which offers an easy and user friendly way of programming dynamic web sites. ASP 3.0 is an easy way to control content - with the flexibility to handle complex professional commercial sites, utilizing components, objects and Databases. ASP 3.0 is now being given away in Windows 2000, opening up a potentially huge new market of users.

One of the best introductory books ever:
This text is so packed with information, it even goes beyond asp and introduces XML and COM+....so well written, so concise, publishers throughtout the country need to learn from wrox' writers on how to do technical books right! Every bit of code is explained in great detail, and while there are some errors, the website covers nearly all of them. Case in point: I won't be selling my copy back!

Excellent book for bringing you up to speed:
Prior to purchasing this book I had no experience with ASP whatsoever. One day at work I was told that I needed to study up on ASP, and fast. I didn't really know where to start, but I ended up with this book, and it has been a lifesaver. I took the time to work through the examples in a select few key chapters, and was amazed that after only a couple of days I had developed the skills necessary for basic ASP development. Now its been a few months, and the book still serves as a useful reference. It is extremely well organized. The examples are basic, but definitely teach the fundamentals needed to become a competent ASP developer. It will not make you an expert, but that's not its purpose anyway. It excels at relating the relevant information in an understandable and easy to learn format. For me to be developing with ASP in only 2 or 3 days is a testament to the quality of this book. I've never read a Wrox book before now, but I will definitely only purchase Wrox books in the future.

Excellent beginner book for web development:
This book starts by giving an overview of how the browser, server, and pages interact to deliver web-based data and pages. The first 3 chapters, and the XML intro, are worth the cost of this book. I started this book with very little understanding of how dynamic web pages are delivered over the net, and am now ready and anxious to take on my first web development challenge. Can't wait to put the info in this book to use! The writing style is great also - very seamless and easy understand, even after 6 authors compile their knowledge into one volume!!!

Great Starter Book:
Like the others have said... this is a good starter book for those looking to learn the older ASP technologies, since you may need to know a little of this if you are messing with older sites. I would recommend this book. However, the one thing that is wrong with this book is the MASSIVE amount of grammatical errors and typing errors. Its calling out the wrong variables in certain situanions and mislabeling methods and procedures. Once you are aware this is happening in the book you just need to be mindful and know you aren't crazy, its a typing error. I hope Wrox has started taking their textbooks to the editor and getting them proofread, because it's a shame a book this good is peppered with so many errors. In closing, this is worth the read and it will surely help you on you way to learning ASP 3.0.

Great ASP book!:
Beginning Active Server Pages is an all encompassing book on classic ASP web server development. The authors explain in great detail from the beginning on how dynamic web development works. No matter what technology you use (PHP, Coldfusion, JSP), how a web browser requests a page, the web server send the request to the server-side engine and/or does a database request and send the result to the browser. The book assumes no previous knowledge of web development and explains the basics very well so that any reader can start from any skill level. The beginning of the book discusses what software you will need to get started which basically is either IIS (Internet Information Serve) or PWS (Personal web Server) in a Windows environment. How to install, test and configure the web server is discussed as well as setting up user permissions and virtual directories. This is a great starter to making sure the reader has all the information to get started on creating their first ASP web page. The author continues explaining basic scripting techniques and language syntax of web scripting (VBScript) and explaining the differences between client and server side scripting and how the IIS engine interprets the request. Also covered early are the intrinsic ASP objects such as Request, Response, Server objects. A good review of some of the basic components of this very robust development technology. The book then goes into send and receiving data from web forms in showing the reader some very useful but basic examples to get you started. The book covers in the next few chapters (4 - 5), in detail the basics of VBScript language such as variables, operators, strings, arrays, control statements (if, case, loops) and functions. The next chapter (6), goes into the concept of objects, methods, properties and events which explain to the user that almost everything is an object in ASP and the importance of this fact as well. Some OOP concepts such as encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism are reviewed with some nice examples. The next two chapters cover many important ASP objects in great detail such as Response, Request, Application, Session, and Cookies. These chapters cover most of the most used objects that will be used in almost any ASP application. When you can master these objects you will have a great understanding of the fundamentals of ASP applications. The authors do a great job of explaining these important topics to the reader that it gives you more motivation to read more and learn more. Unlike other books that try to explain too much and confuse the reader, this book explains just enough in English other than techo-bable. The rest of the book covers all types of database access using connects, recordsets, cursors, ADO, locking, filtering data, SQL syntax, and much more. Among other topics covered at the end of the book are focusing on advanced topics such as XML, Transactions and COM+. The book is really all you need to learn and master ASP to develop dynamic web applications for yourself.