If you think you're well versed in ASP.NET, think again. This exceptional guide gives you a master class in site building with ASP.NET 3.5 and other cutting-edge Microsoft technologies. You learn how to develop rock-solid web portal applications that can withstand millions of hits every day while surviving scalability and security pressures -- not just for mass-consumer homepages, but also for dashboards that deliver powerful content aggregation for enterprises.

Written by Omar AL Zabir, co-founder and CTO of Pageflakes, Building a Web 2.0 Portal with ASP.NET 3.5 demonstrates how to develop portals similar to My Yahoo!, iGoogle, and Pageflakes using ASP.NET 3.5, ASP.NET AJAX, Windows Workflow Foundation, LINQ and .NET 3.5. Through the course of the book, AL Zabir builds an open source Ajax-enabled portal prototype (available online at www.dropthings.com), and walks you though the design and architectural challenges, advanced Ajax concepts, performance optimization techniques, and server-side scalability problems involved.

You learn how to:

• Implement a highly decoupled architecture following the popular n-tier, widget-based application model
• Provide drag-and-drop functionality, and use ASP.NET 3.5 to build the server-side part of the web layer
• Use LINQ to build the data access layer, and Windows Workflow Foundation to build the business layer as a collection of workflows
• Build client-side widgets using JavaScript for faster performance and better caching
• Get maximum performance out of the ASP.NET AJAX Framework for faster, more dynamic, and scalable sites
• Build a custom web service call handler to overcome shortcomings in ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 for asynchronous, transactional, cache-friendly web services
• Overcome JavaScript performance problems, and help the user interface load faster and be more responsive
• Solve scalability and security problems as your site grows from hundreds to millions of users
• Deploy and run a high-volume production site while solving software, hardware, hosting, and Internet infrastructure problems

Building a Web 2.0 Portal with ASP.NET 3.5 also presents real-world ASP.NET challenges that the author has solved in building educational and enterprise portals, plus thirteen production disasters common to web applications serving millions of users. If you're ready to build state-of-the art, high-volume web applications, this book has exactly what you need.

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Um Livro Completo,  March 25 2008
Submitted by Jenner Maciejewsky Rocha   [Respond | View]

Building a Web 2.0 Portal with ASP.NET 3.5 é um excelente livro, principalmente para aqueles que pretendem conhecer melhor a estrutura de uma aplicações web.

O Autor não aborda apenas os recursos do ASP.NET, mas passa por recursos importantes no desenvolvimento de uma aplicações web, como LINQ para quem deseja construir aplicações com acesso a dados utilizando a nova tecnologia disponibilizada pela Microsoft.

O Capitulo Architecting the Web Portal and Widgets, traz uma excelente abordagem sobre como deve ser a arquitetura de um projeto WEB, enquanto que o capitulo Improving Client-Side Performance faz uma excelente abordagem a respeito de como melhorar a performance do seu portal do lado do Cliente, uma das maiores preocupações que um arquiteto web tem nos dias de hoje.

Eu recomendo a todos que leiam esse livro e deixe sempre a mão para suas aplicações.

Very unique book full with goodness,  February 15 2008
Submitted by Jonathan Robin   [Respond | View]

This was an awesome read!

If you are an intermediate developer, this book has everything you need to know to grow and become an advanced developer and eventually an architect. Not only that, you will be able to learn how to build and maintain your own production web solutions all by yourself.

This book has so far the best collection of performance and scalability optimization techniques. Majority of the techniques are very unique, not found in any other book or website.

Although I partially agree with Bart on his comment about texts already available in blog and codeproject, but I disagree on some points:

- It's perfectly normal to start a topic on a blog and then eventually enrich it from user feedback and write an article or book out of it. Books or articles generally have polished, much elaborated description and lessions from past mistakes and user feedback. The author has done the same. When I see his blog posts or articles, they are somewhat shortcuts, not in detail, full of holes. But the book surely shows sign of experience on each topic.

- The 10 ASP.NET article he mentioned came out after the book was published and actually has two unique techniques that's missing in both blog and book. The article is basically an aggregation of blog posts author made earlier.

- Despite the information already available in his articles and blog, the first 5 chapters, especially the whole Chapter 7 is surely unique in the book. The remaining chapters are also well elaborated and shows authors experience from his research and blog post. All of them surely makes the book worth the money.



Pretty Good book, but be careful before you buy...,  February 13 2008
Submitted by Bart Czernicki   [Respond | View]

This book is a great resource for tips/tricks from one of the architect/technology heads at pageflakes.com.

The book is written in an easy to understand flow. It is definitely aimed at a much more seasoned/sr. level programmer. The book's flow seems like an experience guide from implementing pageflakes.com architecture and the pains/solutions dealing with the many gotchas.

A lot of the content has been already posted on sites such as codeproject.com (actually I would say the articles in the public domain are taken VERBATIM from the book; or vice versa). The chapters about: dropthings.com, async threads and ASP.NET performance can all be found on the site. For example:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/10ASPNetPerformance.aspx

My other problem with the book is that the book only focuses on the web portal for only a few chapters and the rest is geared towards optimization and ASP.NET/servers etc. The title of the book should be changed to a resource guide or a tips/tricks book (somehow I think this title looks better and could sell more copies though) :)

The performance suggestions are top notch. I wish there were more examples of the net performance gain to focus on the core performance rather than trying to figure out what can give you the most bang for your buck.

Overall very good book, but beware ur not getting 280 pages of web 2.0 portal goodness.


Buy this book now.,  January 25 2008
Submitted by Anonymous Reader   [Respond | View]

If you are a Microsoft web developer you need to purchase this book.

It is quite a short book weighing in at only 280 pages however the amount of very useful information contained within those short number of pages is staggering.

This book is taken from the perspective of building your own fully Ajax enabled web portal and is based on a production web site Pageflakes (http://www.pageflakes.com) . Omar guides you through design and implementation decisions that you need to think of when constructing your web site, scalability decisions, performance decisions, security considerations etc.

On the code side of things the sample site that this book is based on uses all the up to date technologies that Microsoft has released including Ajax and Windows Workflow. Omar explains best practices on building a website, N-Tier architectures, using interfaces for pluggable components to your site etc.

This is the best book on .Net programming I have read in a while and there is a lot in it from both the architects and the developers points of view.


Excellent Book,  January 13 2008
Submitted by Samiha Esha   [Respond | View]

Congratulation !!
It's a brilliant Book about ASP.NET Technology.

Regards,
Samiha Esha.

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