"Teach Yourself Active Server Pages 3.0 In 21 Days", by Scott
Mitchell and James Atkinson, is an excellent resource for web
developers who wish to learn some of the beginning lessons in
ASP. It covers a large variety of topics, including a terrific
series of chapters on VBScript as a scripting language, and
several chapters on database access. By including in-depth
fundamentals and logic of VBScript programming and programming
in general, the book proves to be a great resource for HTML
designers who have little experience with true programming
languages. The authors clearly understand that the
prospective reader is likely to have the most difficult time in
understanding the basic fundamentals of the language and how
things tie together, and after they grasp these concepts, the
rest will be a matter of reading more. The book explains
several approaches to a small block of code whenever possible,
and covers the main differences between each approach.
Structurally, the book is quite sound. The 21-day learning
process is broken down by weeks. After each week is a weekly
review section, including work on a small project that is
continued throughout the book. This small project is a
terrific way to help the user understand why each element of
the learning process is important in the scope of a future
project they might work on. The book uses plenty of code
samples and includes line numbers for easy referencing. The
style of coding the authors use (which they explain to some
degree in the early chapters) is likely to improve the
maintainability of readers' code if they follow the same
practices. Along the same lines, the book provides a handy set
of figures and tables on stylistic elements such as naming
conventions and data types. These should prove to be quite
valuable for the beginning coder, who is likely to use obscure
variable names when their style is unchecked.
The content itself is quite strong, covering all of the major
topics and areas that are commonly used in ASP development.
These include topics like including other files, transferring
control to another script, databases, components, error
handling, and so on. All of these areas cover the topic well,
often including underlying logic or structure in order to help
the user's mental picture of the process. The book also has a
handy reference section at the end that includes both function
and method references as well as a listing of useful web sites
to continue the user's learning.
Some of the areas do tend to explain things in ways which are
easy to understand for the beginner, but eventually should be
improved upon with more advanced coding techniques that are
more complicated than the scope of the book would allow. A
good example of this is the methods it provides for updating
records in a database. A more advanced user is likely to use
a SQL statement to accomplish the task. However, trying to
introduce the entire SQL language while at the same time
explaining the concepts of database manipulation in ASP would
prove to be difficult, and the author understandably chooses
to increase the user's understanding rather than overwhelm
them with specifics. A reader who is interested in a specific
topic that is covered only as an overview will be likely to
want an additional reference on the specific topic. Even
without additional references, though, the book is likely to
give the user a very good start into the realm of ASP/VBscript
development.
The only complaint about the book that is worth noting is in
the components chapter. While it is understandable that the
authors cover the use of built-in ASP components included in
most IIS installations, the authors fail to even mention some
of the more commonly used components such as mailing objects,
upload components, etc. A little more mention of these might
prove useful to the average reader, even if only to mention
these objects or point out a few places to look for more
information on components.
"Teach Yourself Active Server Pages 3.0 In 21 Days" is a very
good resource for HTML designers who wish to dip their feet
into the world of ASP. It introduces the important programming
concepts and provides working code examples that the reader can
test and modify, covers a broad range of useful topics, and is
likely to start the reader off in the right direction.
