You will find this book very helpful if you are new to Active Server Pages. The book describes very clearly what ASP is, how it works, what it does, etc. This book will also make the beginner comfortable with how to write basic VBscript or similar in order to code their Active Server Pages. Wonderful coverage is given to all the basic ASP objects, their properties, and methods and how to invoke the power of each. This book has some funny prose to it and is not overly in-depth, but it will make a newcomer comfortable with integrating their current html skills, client-side scripting skills, and ASP into useful applications.

This book is not just about ASP. This book contains chapters on just about everything you can put on a website. (dynamic) HTML, client (in vb) and serversidescripting (vb & jscript). Building components, java-applets, database-access. You name it, and it's there. The downside is that this quite expensive book it not detailed enough. The only chapters that are reasonably complete are the ones about Jscript and VBscript. The others will not get you much further than some "hello world"-like application. The other thing that I don't like about the book that it is very Internet Explorer oriented. The chapters on HTML are completely unusable for netscape-browsers, and this is the only book I know that boasts Vb as a client-side scripting language. Add the very irritatng introductions of the chapters and there you have it. Not a book for pro's, but I can imagine it being usefull for people who wish to know a little about a lot of things and are prepared to buy seperate books for the items they are actually interested in.

Excellent guide for developping dynamic, Interactive Web Site. This book goes into relevent details and guides you through the process of development without assuming that you have 20 years of development experience behind you.

I would recommend it for junior developpers

Considering that most of the Oracle DBA books on the market are simply horrible, filling hundreds of pages with unneeded info, this book is the first attempt to make a purely technical, no nonesense reference guide for DBAs to use. Those new to Oracle 8 will get a good introduction to new features. However, do not look for a recipe to install Oracle on Unix, do backup and recovery, set up the OS environment, etc. For these critical and complex tasks the book follows the old industry tradition: it gently touches upon these topics... and moves on.

Granted...I am a junior DBA but this book is very good at presenting the basics with enough detail that I would definitely recommend it over many other general Oracle DBA books (including the Handbook by Oracle Press). It really helped in spelling out the exact steps to creating a database as well as installing Oracle (which for some reason many books neglect). With that said, whether you use this book or another book, it is a good idea to also purchase topic specific books (eg. Backup and Recovery, Tuning, etc.) when more detail is needed.

As a Solaris admin I have little knowledge of Oracle. I really did not want to know much either. However, I must know something of it's design and layout. I also need to know what services/daemons do what. However, all the books I found covered Oracle on NT/2000. Who in their right mind would do such a thing! Anyway, this book as sufficient coverage of Oracle on Solaris that it helped get me up to speed on Oracle enough to understand an Oracle DBA when they speak!

I read through this book very quickly, because I know most of the stuffs. There are couple good examples in this book, which will work. Few samples on the CD do not work.

If you don't have a clue what programming is, DO NOT buy this book.

Chapter 9 .. That's where they ask the question "What is an Active Server Page?", a question you presumably asked BEFORE reading chapters 1-8.

The truly sad part is that the book can't even competently answer the question. Maybe I should write a book about the mating habits of giant squid and call it "ASP Secrets Revealed!" ... At least you would get to read about giant squid doing the dirty.

I've been in IT for 15 years and every 5 years or so I move to a different technology. Recently I moved into e-Commerce. To get to speed quickly I need to find books and classes that progress through the technology in increasingly more complex levels. This book helped me understand the concept of Microsoft's Internet technology. It allowed me to progress from what is referred to as a newbie to someone who could hold somewhat intelegent conversations with experienced eCommerce developers. It's unfortunate that they decided to call the book Active Server Pages: Black Book as this seems to imply that it will provide you with all you need to know about ASP. It doesn't. If you're looking for a book that gives you detail then you'll want to purchase WROX Active Server Pages 2.0. I bought both books and I'm glad I did. The Black Book allowed me to ease into the WROX book. Keep in mind though that the ASP:Black Book is a one time read while the WROX book will become my main source for reference.

A fine book if you want the practical side of writing an Active web page. Lots of practical examples. True it isn't just about ASP, but it is about using ASP to develop a whole Web site. Best of 3 books I have on the subject.

Firstly the examples do not try to explain which code example they relate to on the CD rom. You have to distribute the code on the cd rom to paths on your web server, so unless you are already a dab hand at configuring a JSP server you cannot begin, the book doesn't help you with this, or anything else, in fact I would suggest the only people who may be able to decipher this book are expert professional Java programmers who must also have a knack for interpreting rambling babble. Avoid this book at all costs, talking of cost, cut to the Author - tropical beach - pina colada.

The book looked great and I thought that I can learn how to build my own web site within 30 days, especially since I had a fair amount of knowledge in HTML, Java, UNIX, C++, MFC etc. My only setback was that I have never done XML and JSP programming, nor used Tomcat web server before.

The book gives very little information about paths to put the example codes, and insufficient information on the server setup. After visiting the authors' web site and setting up the codes where, I believe, they should be, the main codes and servlets do not work.

I discovered some bugs in the files and fixed them. Yet the codes (except the HTML) still do not work.

Six weeks after buying the book I am no nearer learning XML and JSP. How can you learn how to use these languages when the codes that accompany the book do not work?

Though the book contains a lot of code, it becomes evident as you go through the book, that the author has not thought about using them in real world situations. All applications use DOM for XML parsing and Servlets for presentation of the content. A few JSPs are thrown in may be because the title says so!

Buy this book if you got a lot of money!