Not being a browser engineer, my knowledge is not the best in that area so probably the talk was a little dry.  We did spend a bunch of time talking about the the Sprite library just released to codeplex from the Asp.Net team.  That was  a great discussion!  I plan on talking more about that at my upcoming DevConnections talks in Orlando (very soon).  One interesting note was that there was a browser compatibility slide regarding sprites from Microsoft.  One of the attendees said “Peter, are you sure that Sprites are only supported on IE 8 and above?”.  I said I was sure that is what the document that I got from Microsoft said.  Well, I had several emails today with the Asp.Net team including the author of the document and though I don’t know the final answer, I’m sure that the Microsoft document was wrong on browser compatibility.  It seems that css and sprite support would work all the back to IE6.  When I know more, I’ll post a comment below with a link.  I’m sure Microsoft plans on updating that doc.

That’s it for now.  Below are some pictures from before the meeting.  I’d say that we had about 75 people in attendance.

To start with, they have lots and lots of examples covering a lot more areas. There is a lot more architectural discussions that really help in building high end ExtJS applications. Chapter 13 for example is completely devoted to code reuse (extending ExtJS).  New features such as Ext.Direct are discussed extensively as well as the new graphics library (but don’t take that too seriously because it is being replaced with a non-flash version in ExtJS 4.0 which is coming out soon).

Overall, I give this book a solid A.  I’m even fortunate enough to get mine signed by Shea Frederick, one of the authors (see picture below).

Hope you get a chance to read this great book!

Two of the sections I feel are particularly well written or the ones that talk about Storage and Tables (chapters 7 and 8).  The application I’ve been working on heavily uses blob storage and I spend lots of times re-reading those sections.  Azure tables is a hard topic to get a sql server programmer like me to get my head wrapped around.  Sriram does a great job of talking directly to someone like me to help me understand how and when to use tables.

Again, I whole heartedly recommend this book.

On to the review..

As I mentioned above, The book starts out with a very general discussion of what is cloud computing.  Currently, the cloud is a pretty over used word and it’s important to understand what is meant by it.  Things like “Application as Service”, “Cloud Storage”, etc. are all important to understand when talking about the cloud.

Following that, the book dives into the details of Azure (and there are a lot of details).  It goes into great details (and specifics) on Azure Blob Storage, Azure Queues, Azure Tables, AppFabric (formerly Velocity), Azure Service Bus, and also discusses deployment issues.

I do recommend this book.  I believe it will help if you want to get into the cloud using Microsoft’s offerings.

Windows Azure Platform (Pro)

You all know that I’ve blogged quite a bit about LINQ2SQL.  That technology has saved me a huge amount of programming effort verses using ado.net directly.  We all know that LINQ2SQL is really just a stepping stone to Entity Framework (EF), though Microsoft doesn’t quite say that.  I’m sure, based on how many people are using LINQ2SQL, it will live on and be supported for quite sometime.  Personally, I’ve been waiting for EF to become more mature and then, I assume I’ll start all my new projects with it (EF) and slowly migrate my old ones from LINQ2SQL to EF.  So, time for me to start taking EF more seriously.  It’s baked into the upcoming .net 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 beta 2.  It’s obviously not done, but from what I’ve seen, when .net 4.0 releases, EF will be ready for prime time.

Now, for the review:

Julie does a great job of introducing Entity Framework and explaining where it fits in, and why you should consider using it.  I was already sold, but now I understand better why.  She then does an excellent job of going through the basics of EF, telling you how to use it, describing the model and all the details necessary to begin using it.  One of the nice features of this book, is it goes beyond the theoretical, and talks about specific implementations.  That is, WCF, WPF, etc.

We all need to get more comfortable with EF and this book is a great starting place.  Julie Lerman is clearly the person to learn this from.  I strongly recommend it.

Programming Entity Framework

This book lives up to it’s billing.  It starts out going through JavaScript in general, but then moves on to the OO constructs it advertises.  For example, Chapter 4 titled simply “Objects” goes through all the basics.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone learning JavaScript for use in an OO environment.

Among other things, the goes in to great detail on the following topics:

• Domain Driven Design
• Model View Presenter Pattern
• Factory Pattern Using Structure Map (IOC)
• Error Handling
• Social Network Schema Designs (Friends and Groups)
• Messaging
• Data Layers (LINQ to SQL)
• Blog Design
• Forums and Moderation

As well as many other topics including application scaling and many others.  As developers, we have many choices as to what technologies to use and how to use them.  I have to say, I agree with 95% of the choices Andrew makes and whole heartedly recommend reading his book.

asp.net 3.5 social networking

So far, I’ve read the first four chapters and have skimmed the rest.  I am so far very impressed with both how well it’s written and the depth of topics the book covers.  As I read more, I’ll come back and update this post.  I have no doubts I will get a lot out of this book, as I’m sure practically anyone else who buys it will also.

If you want to read more of Lynn’s stuff, check out her blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/socaldevgal/

William Bartholomew just published a new book on MSBuild and TFS. There is a great forward by Richard Hundhausen (Famous TFS Author and top MS consultant).  I personally don’t use TFS yet, but I do use MSBuild and plan on using it more extensively for web deployments going forward.  I have not yet read the book, but am anxiously looking forward to.  It is a topic that IMHO has been very under documented.  This should be a big help!

Amazon.com: Learning Ext JS

(Note:  2/11/09:  I love this book.  I still plan on writing a more detailed review, but for now, I thought I’d put a brief comment.  I carry it around with me every where  go (almost everywhere).  It has great examples and great explanations -Peter)

My path to success has been two books.  First, Douglas Crockford’s JavaScript: The Good Parts is really all about the why.  That is, what is good and what is not.  It not only tells you how to do things (though in very compact language), it tells you why.  One very nice thing it does it explains the rational for things and  where compromises have been made.  It’s short and dense.  That is, kind of K&G for c, it does not mince words.  I’m on my 3rd pass now and still learning things.

When I need more words, I go to the other book.  JavaScript: The Definitive Guide by David Flanagan.  It doe a great job of explaining in details all the little parts of JavaScript in a non-dense way.  It’s about 4 times longer than The Good Parts and does get a little wordy at times, but for me, I often need the extra words.

I could not live without both of these books.

So, on to the review…

Jon does a great job right from the start of explaining c#.  One nice thing he does through out the book is he talks about the feature as it moved from version 1.0 to 2.0 to 3.0.  For example, he talks about delegates and how the new feature in 3.0 makes it so much easier and more clear to read and write delegates.  Same thing with anonymous methods.  His writing style is clear and concise and he’s got lots of great examples.

I’m now a big Jon Skeet fan, hope you will be also.

Turns out, I was very wrong.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s strength is that you can reference .net assemblies directly.  That means, you can access everything in .Net just like a first class language.  Be that C# or VB, you can get to all of it.  You can write your own assemblies and reference them as well!  It of course if fully object oriented, very rich, and full error handling.  Very cool

So, back to the book.  Bruce Payett does a great job of introducing Windows Power Shell (aka Monad) and taking you step by step through the process of using it.  He has lots of great examples and the book, as you would expect from a Manning book, is well indexed and well illustrated.  I highly recommend getting it if you have not used Power Shell before.

Run don’t walk.  go buy this book!

Amazon.com: Pro ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008, Second Edition

]]> http://peterkellner.net/2007/12/18/bookreview_proaspnet/feed/ 1 http://peterkellner.net/2007/12/17/linqbookreview1/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=linqbookreview1 http://peterkellner.net/2007/12/17/linqbookreview1/#comments Mon, 17 Dec 2007 14:54:56 +0000 Peter Kellner http://peterkellner.net/2007/12/17/linqbookreview1/ A book review on one of the first LINQ books published. IMHO, an excellent book to add to your library

I enthusiastically recommend it to anyone trying to incorporate Ajax into their asp.net applications.  It’s not only got a great introduction, but also goes into lots of useful details for day to day programming.

Amazon.com: ASP.NET AJAX in Action

If I were making stars, I’d give him them all!

Here is a link you can get the book from.

Pro WPF: Windows Presentation Foundation in .NET 3.0