Microsoft Silverlight Books

A very good book for beginners/starters

I am a Database SME for the last 15 years and have not done any serious programming in any traditional language such as C, C++, and .Net for the last 8 years. Got a fascination to get into programming again starting with C# as the IT programming landscape is getting closer between DBAs and developers. I was introduced to this book by one of our senior IT engineers. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book and more importantly going step by step programming in C#. I could not have asked for better. The book is guided by many worked out small scale projects which is useful and becomes interesting for beginners like me. The PayPal project was a good experience to get into details and work on a full fledged project.
At the end of each section, the "How it works" section is really useful and gives a glimpse of the internals.
I would definitely recommend this book for any beginners, especially database professionals embarking on learning a widely used language besides their comfort zone of "T-SQL" and hence a 5 star.


Sudheer K. Maharana
04 June, 2010

Great book to get up and running with a nice website at the end

This book is a really nice, comprehensive, easy-to-read and goal oriented approach to web development.
I don't have much of a background with C#, but I found the text concise enough that I have no problem with the examples. The exercises, complete with step by step screenshots, didn't hurt either. I also really appreciated the fact that the exercises in the book depended on freely available software. Too many books assume you have the full version of the software, but suggest that the free versions will be "sufficient".
The book's idea of walking the reader through the building of a full scale application leaves the reader with a nice code library to use on future projects. And the emphasis on generic coding ensures code reuse. I especially like the section on payment processing. Using Paypal is great, but it was nice to learn how to implement a more robust and seamless system.
Overall, the book is a great guide. I do wish they had spent a little more time on the database aspects, since it plays such large role in e-commerce website enhancements.


A. Sattar
13 April, 2010

This book is recommended for those interested in C# and E-COMMERCE

Book review - "Beginning asp.net e-commerce in C# From Novice to Professional" by Cristian Darie and Karli Watson, 2009 edition.
I am a member of the Inland Empire .DOT NET users group (a Microsoft .NET programmer's user group based in Southern California) and have been a professional programmer / programmer analyst for about 22 years now. I was tasked with reviewing this book so I dug right in and started reading. I was struck immediately by the fact that it DOES (as the title implies) allow for somebody who is a complete beginner to actually start this type of project. The early chapters of the book did in fact take the approach of trying to walk through all the steps of creating an asp.net website project and did a good job in explaining the "how's and why's " of each step. I liked the fact that the project in the book is based upon allowing somebody to be able to download the Visual Studio 2008 web express edition and Microsoft Sql Server 2008 express edition (both free downloads from the Microsoft web site) and actually compile and build the sample e-commerce website depicted in the book (A store that sells balloons, known as the "balloon shop"). The early chapters of the book also did a good job explaining how to use SQL Server management studio and sql server scripts to create the database design used throughout the book. The project source code deliberately avoided things that only owners of more advanced editions of the Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 editions could do. For example, in Visual Studio Web Express edition, you cannot compile .net assemblies (basically DLL's). The book also explained to the more seasoned programmer that this was a deliberate design approach (no compiled .net assemblies) to accommodate those users who may only have access to the free Visual Studio Web Express Edition.

As for the content, I was happy with the book because it covered pretty much all of the major areas a programmer could be expected to master when designing, programming and maintaining a real-live ecommerce website. Concepts such as multi-tier application development, SQL SERVER stored procedures, optimization for external search engines, using sql server "FULLTEXT" search capabilities, receiving payments with PayPal and/or credit card transactions, building site administration capabilities so managers of the website could, for example adjust the pricing of particular items, or even put items on special sale. The author even explored more advanced concepts such as why we need SSL and how to encrypt and decrypt data (even explaining the more salient points of asymmetric encryption).

I liked the sample website based upon a balloon shop, because it allowed for users to register and logon to the website, product recommendations (such as customer written product reviews), even the integrating of the baloonshop website with Amazon web services so you can sell Amazon products on the sample website!

Not everything is wine and roses however, the sample website and database script files had some strange errors, especially in the sql server script that creates the baloonshop database, Myself, as a seasoned programmer analyst could figure out ways around the errors and how to "restart" the script so that successfully created database tables or stored procedures did not get "attempt to get recreated" (leading to even more confusing errors to a beginning programmer). Basically, you need to know how to identify the database script that failed and run that portion of the script only once you have identified how to fix the problem. After about 20 minutes, I was eventually able to get a working website (along with its associated database) up and running, but a beginning programmer may get frustrated at all the errors trying to setup the database and website that he or she may give up out of frustration. That would be a sad thing because the project is actually very useful and as stated, gives a nice overall concept of the things a programmer would have to deal with in creating an advanced e-commerce site.

I do believe that the raw, beginning asp.net programmer would need a little more background to tackle some of the more advanced concepts, although the authors give very good explanations in trying to teach how to use sql server management studio, and visual studio 2008 express, but it wouldn't hurt to have a little more .net programming background. I think the title of the book is an apt description, "Beginning ASP.NET e-commerce in C#, from Novice to Professional" because it has a level of depth that should allow professional programmers to gain some good knowledge from the book while also having plenty of useful things to learn for the beginning asp.net / C# programmer. I would give the book overall an "A", with the actual book source deserving of a "B-", because it has some errors that may give some readers a frustrating time of trying to get the book examples working. However, once a reader of the book can get the source code working, he or she will be pleasantly surprised at the nice "balloon shop e-commerce site and its associated database".








Gilbert M. Vanegas
15 March, 2010

The Best book for Ecommerce in Asp.Net

I am working on this book and the older version of asp.net 2.0, I tell you this book is packed with loads & loads of coding, I like the framework for interaction with database, its pretty solid.

What I did not like is the "link Factory" it generates absolute links, but kept on getting confused, so I bought the older version("Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 E-Commerce in C# 2005"), so basically using both books.

It is a wonderful book on creating E commerce site, I don't think there is any competing book in market using .Net technology.

I strongly recommend to buy this book if you are working on E-commerce or intended to work on it.

fzshah76
13 January, 2010

A Unique book...

This book is unique. It is one of those few books in the market that you can take from the introduction up to the last chapter and everything you try will work... on the first try!
The books covers the entire construction of a "simple" e-commerce site... "simple" in the beggining, just to get your e-shop running quickly. But in the last chapters, you start adding complex features that really spice things up a bit. Also, the authors gives you some hints on how you should expand the functionality of the site in case you are interested.
In my opinion, this book is a must buy.
The only "drawback" that I can find is that it should probably include a bit of Ajax on ASP.NET. If they did that, it will just be the best book in the market... but the book never states that it will teach you that, so I can't substract a star because of this.
If you were looking for a book on building e-commerce sites on ASP.NET, don't look anymore, this is your book. Highly recommended for beginners on e-commerce with a base on C# and ASP.NET. It is better that you, at least, know the tools before reading this book, you will be able to get a lot out of the book that way.

Fernando Turi
05 January, 2010