Book Review: ASP.NET 2.0 Cookbook

Full Disclosure: I am a Senior Java Developer who sometimes plays a C# developer on TV.

Just kidding....about the TV part. I work as a contractor and as is wont of contractors, I am required to jump into different technologies at a moment's notice and fix stuff and make things work - hit the ground running, so to speak. Even though my primary focus has been Java for years now, I have had to work on C# development on many occasions. How does all this rambling preamble apply to the book I am reviewing? It has been written for me.

Yes, the cookbook has been written for people like me, who have to instantly become experts in various technologies depending on need but are atleast familiar with the basic foundation ideas of the technologies they are working with. The Cookbook is broadly divided into 16 different categories of quick-fix solutions that adhere to the best practices and can be used by someone who doesn't want to re-invent the wheel. It allows a developer with basic knowledge of the technology jump in and deliver solutions to commonly faced problems without too much trouble.

The ASP.NET 2.0 version of the book includes both newer technologies like the Master Pages, new & improved Profiles and Themes along with the age-old problems of a good security model, tracing and debugging and caching. My favorite chapters were the "Web Parts" and "Web Services" - both of which being technologies I tend to deal with on a daily basis whether on C# or on Java side.

Overall, I found the book very lucidly written, easy to understand as long as you know the basics of the ASP.NET paradigms and makes the development of solutions for your most common problems a lot easier. I highly recommend this wheter you are a C# expert or an occasional dabbler - it is especially useful as a primer for most C#-specific design patterns scattered all over the solutions.

There is tons of sample code provided on a companion website that I had no trouble running and seemed to work as advertised. Every example had both the C# and VB versions of code, so this is useful for all ASP.NET developers.