Mastering Active Server Pages 3

Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP) technology is popular for both Internet and intranet Web sites, thanks to its use of familiar Visual Basic script, easy access to databases, and integration with Windows NT and Windows 2000. This title is a complete guide to ASP 3 (the Windows 2000 version), but most of the book applies equally to ASP 2. No previous knowledge is assumed.

The author, Russell Jones, is the interactive-developer columnist for Visual Basic Programmer's Journal. The book begins with an overview of ASP and HTML, describes the intrinsic ASP objects that form the foundation for ASP programming, introduces both VBScript and JScript, and provides a guide to file access using the File System Object. A key to ASP is accessing data with Active Data Objects (ADO), and the database section describes both ADO and the SQL query language. The book also includes a brief look at transaction handling with Microsoft Transaction Server.

Final sections address the bigger picture: designing complete applications. The discussion of state management and general tips on application design are valuable. The book gives a brief introduction to developing your own components, alongside chapters on task scheduling, scalability, XML, and using ASP on Unix.

The strength of this book is also its weakness. In making it suitable for ASP beginners, the author has limited the space available for advanced topics. If you are looking for extensive coverage of COM+, more detail on ADO, or using ASP with Message Queue Server or Active Directory, for example, check out Professional Active Server Pages 3.0. On the other hand, beginning and intermediate developers will find Mastering Active Server Pages 3 an excellent starting point. --Tim Anderson