Book Review: ASP.NET Site Performance Secrets

When I first got this book I thought it was going to be a compilation of tips and tricks. I was quite surprised with the fact that it really wasn't.  The author starts out by telling you how you to determine the bottlenecks in your site then goes into a lot of samples on how to correct and / or improve them. He covers memory, CPU, caching, compression and more.

This book is definitely worth a read then a reread every once in a while. I plan on implementing some of the suggestions for my sites.

Check out the book on the Packt Publishing site or ASP.NET Site Performance Secrets .

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ASP.NET 3.5 Application Architecture and Design

Although this books title states the book is for ASP.NET 3.5 application architecture and design, you will be able to take these concepts well beyond ASP.NET.  The concepts and technics that this author conveys can be used for all Windows .NET development.  The author starts out explaining basic 1 tier architecture and eventually graduates you to a five tier architecture.

The book covers ER diagrams, domain modeling, common design patterns, SOA, WCF and even database design.  This book is a good starter book for those of you that want to move out of the developer role and start learning about basic principals in applications design.

There is only one downside the book and that is the formatting of the code samples.  There seems to be an issue with the spacing and tabs (at least in the book).  Other than that it is a good read.

You can purchase the book on the PackT Publishing site.

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slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations

I typically post reviews of books based on technology topics like .NET, LINQ, etc. but I thought this book would be a could fit for the site.  This book is about creating effective PowerPoint slides which many technology professionals, like myself, do on a regular basis. On to the review...

The author breaks up the book into multiple chapters but not your typically kind of chapters.  These chapters are about the different parts that make up a slide; graphics, displaying data, diagrams, use of movement, etc.  Each chapter is typically closed with a Case Study which demonstrates the use of the technic or recommend. This is done by showing a before and after presentation.  The author also reinforces her points effectively by using graphics, colors and illustrations.

The book is chock full of handy tips and suggestions that anyone can use to create dazzling and effective PowerPoint slides.  If you present using PowerPoint, this is a must have.

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LINQ in Action

I think the expression is "don't cry over spilled milk...", well when my son spilled milk on this book I almost cried. Why would you cry over a book you ask? There are many reasons.  Not only does the book go into LINQ in depth (I know there is a C# in Depth book) but the authors cover all of the parts of the .NET framework that were created and needed for LINQ to function. In addition, all of the samples provided are both in C# and VB.NET. These samples are not your basic "Hello World" samples but useful reusable code snippets that get the point of the book section across.

The book starts of with an introduction to LINQ and the different versions of LINQ to xxx, more than enough to wet your whistle. The authors then go into the prerequisites of the .NET framework required, generics, anonymous types and lambda expressions.  This chapter was so good I read it twice.  The third chapter discusses how LINQ is made up.  After this, the authors go in depth in describing the different types of LINQ, including LINQ to SQL, LINQ to Objects and LINQ to Amazon with useful examples. 

This book will be a reference book on my book shelf.  I expect to refer to this book constantly.

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Managing Software Development with Trac and Subversion

This book is short on the number of pages but not necessarily on content.  The books author approaches Software Development Project Management as a problem and offers up how you can use Trac and Subversion as a solution. 

The book starts to talk about what Software Development Project Management is a how to break it up into its pieces.  It then proceeds to introduce how to make Software Development Project Management easier with Trac, Subversion, Apache Web Server and WebDAV. The book then begins to describe how to use Trac and Subversion of some of the details of each.

Overall, the book is a good starting point if you want to add Trac and Subversion to your project.  There are two things that I would have liked to see in the book however.  The first is the use of TortoiseSVN client as opposed to the command line.  The second is less use of the command line, while this is OK for Linux developers and some Windows developers, most do not like to use command lines.

You can find more about the book from the Packt Publishing web site at http://www.packtpub.com/managing-software-development-with-trac-and-subversion/book

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Programming Windows Workflow Foundation: Practical WF Techniques and Examples using XAML and C#

Well as you can see the title is quite but extremely accurate.  The book covers a "real world" use of Windows Workflow foundation.  The author takes you through Windows Workflow Foundation by building a bug tracking application which is an ideal candidate for a workflow technology.  I think this approach is what makes this book stand apart from other Windows Workflow foundation books. It is short and concise and gives you a real application of the technology.  This is not a book filled with marketing fluff or the Hello World app (with the exception of the first chapter).

Overall, this book is a good read for those that want to get started in Windows Workflow Foundation.

The books web site: http://www.packtpub.com/windows-workflow-foundation-Csharp/book

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Community Server Quickly: A Concise and Practical Guide to Installation, Administration, and Customization

This book covers all of the basic functionality of the Community Server product from Telligent. Chapter 1 gives you a background of the product. Chapter 2 tells you what is required to use the product and how to get a copy of it. The rest of the chapters dive into the detail on the individual features of Community Server, like blogging, forums, RSS feeds, user management and more.

The author of the book was very diligent to capture every and explain the many configuration options for Community Server. This makes the book a worthwhile purchase for anyone who wants to implement Community Server.

This book is out and is available from Packt. For more information about this book, please visit: http://www.packtpub.com/community-server/book

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Beginners Guide to SQL Server Integration Services Using Visual Studio 2005

The back cover of the book states that the intended audience is ..."beginners in the developer track who are looking to get an exposure to SSIS".  It was right on the money. 

The book starts off with the a great introduction to what SSIS is and what it is made up of. In then goes into, in depth, how to use Visual Studio 2005 to create, modify, debug and execute SSIS packages.  The rest of the book is a series of Hands On labs guiding you through different task like transferring date from xyz source to SQL Server, which I find to be the best way for me to learn a topic. There is one chapter on scripting with unfortunately for my task a bit simple.  It would have been nice to see an advanced script, maybe something that calculated a value and updated a column.

There were two things that the book was missing... It did not talk about the error handling or logging available in SSIS other than a mention that SSIS has it.

In summary, this is a great book for beginners to SSIS and DBA's that what to start using Visual Studio to debug their SSIS packages.

This book is out and is available from Packt. For more information about this book, please visit: www.packtpub.com/sql-server-integration-services-visual-studio-2005/book

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ASP.NET Data Presentation Controls Essentials

The book is a good starting point for people that was to learn the different ways of binding data from supported sources to ASP.NET controls.  The author does a pretty good job of explaining the basics of some of the data bindable controls like ListBox, DropDownList, etc.  There are whole chapters dedicated to the Repeater, DataList, DataGrid and DataView controls.

Unfortunately there are a few things that I did not like about the book. The first was the code, there were quite a few places where the code was not correct there were typos or incorrect characters to delimitate strings. There where several locations in the code where double angle brackets (« ») where used for strings instead of double quotes (").  Some of the code samples provided for the DataManager class were susceptible to SQL Injection attacks. Now I understand it is a sample but a little disclaimed should be made to break habits.  One last thing, some of code could benefit from some refactoring.

Overall, I think this books would be could a good reference point for data binding in Microsoft ASP.NET.

The website for the book: http://www.packtpub.com/asp-net-data-presentation-controls/book

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LINQ Quick Starter

Packt Publishing recently contacted me to review their latest book, LINQ Quickly, so like any techie with three weeks off I decided to catch up on some reading... Well actually I read this book on the flight to NY (5 hours).

Chapter 1 starts off with an brief introduction to LINQ, the rest of the chapter goes into detail of the new .NET 3.5 framework features created to enable LINQ. The next few chapters cover LINQ to ... Objects, XML, SQL, and XSD. Chapter 6 describes how to use LINQ within you ADO.NET DataSets. 

Chapter 7, which is worth the purchase price of the book covers all of the new Operators that are available to LINQ queries.  This makes the book worthy of purchasing a desktop reference guide for those just getting up to speed on LINQ.

What me to review your book on this blog and my web site (http://www.josephguadagno.net), contact me at http://www.josephguadagno.net/about.aspx

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