Active Books

I bought the first edition in 1994 when we trekked in Wadi Rum with our baby of 4 month. It's was helpfull.
Wadi Rum is tucked away in the south of Jordan, close to the Red Sea port of Aqaba, remote and splendid in both landscape and culture, yet only a five-hour flight and a short onward journey from Europe.
Here are detailed descriptions and 'topos' of all the known routes to date, from short walks, camel treks and 4-WD journeys through sports climbs and major 'big walls' of the highest technical difficulty.

Additionally the author gives information on sites of antiquity, flora and fauna and life with the Bedouin. It is their roguish humour and warm hospitality as much as the magnificence of these deserts and mountains that make a visit to Rum a unique experience. This book tells you everything you need to know.
It is a remote and spectacular landscape, offering unlimited rock for the pioneer, as well as many superb existing routes of all grades of difficulty, while the desert and numerous "siqs" or canyons offer a wilderness experience not to be found anywhere else in the world. The wealth of experience is further increased by the Bedouin whose homeland this is, and by the variety of wildlife to be found in the area. It is hoped that this book will allow others to savor the solitude and mystical magic of these deserts and mountains.

Active noise cancellation is one of these nifty ideas that can be quickly described and understood using high school physics. And in the last 10 years, there have been more products out on in the marketplace, that apply this idea.

But if you want to delve deeper into the field, this book will give an appreciation of the complexity. Hansen takes you beyond a simple brochureware explanation. The subject combines electronics and mechanics, along with control systems. The discussion is sophisticated. Hopefully, the maths won't deter you. Though it can be formidable, even to someone with an undergraduate degree in engineering or the physical sciences.

He also gives a good discussion of the various commercial usages.

a dense book with a usefull summary of theories related to active control of vibrations in mechanical structures. Several remarks on practical usability of alternative approaches clearly derive from author's significant experience on the field.

This book introduces the basic values of preserving "wild" places. Good for any person who loves the outdoors, especially young people and students who may need a lesson in values.

1. If you do not specify the action, the form goes right back to itself. This is called a postback form because it post back to itself.

2.Upon the first time code is submitted to the server it is compiled and ASP does not compile tags it does not recognize. Once the code is compiled, ASP.Net start processing all the user code and event handlers. Event handlers have the following parameters: sender as object and E as eventargs.

3. ASP.Net automatically keeps track of the view state. Developers do not have to maintain or retrieve data being input on the form between different view states.

4. VB.NET variable types are: Byte, short, integer, long, single, double, decimal, char, date, boolean, string, datetime, and objects

5. VB.NET conversion functions are: Cbool, CDec, Cobj, CType, CByte, Cdbl, CShort, Asc, CChar, CInt, CSng, CDate, CLng, Cstr

6. You can create and define code in your event handler "sub handlers button_click(sender as object, e as event args)". When an event is raised - meaning the event happened - it produces variables that describe the event. The object data type represent the object that raised the event.

7. Date/Time functions: datediff, firstdayofweek, day, dayofweek, hour, isdate, minute, now, month,, second, year.

8. Math functions: abs, atan, cos, exp,fix, hex, int, log, oct. rnd, round, sin, sqrt, tan

9. String functions: instr, left, len, mid, replace, right.

10. Buffering allows you to control when output is sent to the browser. Response.buffer = false turns off buffering. When output is buffered, nothing is sent to the buffer until all the code has been executed or the buffer is full. Unbuffered output goes immediately to the browser. Response.flush forces the buffer to empty to the browser.

11. If you create a cookie with a value and then add keys, the initial value will be erased. You can not create cookies with both values and keys.

12. If the browser does not support session cookies, ASP.Net tacks on an encoded version of the session id to a link. When a user clicks a link, ASP decodes the session id and passes to the page the user is requesting.

13. Web forms handles all events and generates html on the server. "" means that upon the button click event a clickhander event will be called passing object and eventargments as parameters. The coding for the event is stored as code referenced by the asp.net page by the directive, "<@page language='vb' CodeFile='your_external_vb_code.aspx.vb' AutoEventWireup='false' Inherits='_Default'>"

14. The Web forms processing order: a. page is requested b. viewstate is restored for any controls c. the page_load event occurs d. events are handled, the page_unload event occurs.

15. The autopostback=true attribute cause the eventhandler to be executed immediately on event. Defined as "OnTextchanged='myhandler'", when the text has changed, a post will occur, and the myhandler function will be called.

16. The web forms framework is a huge boon for Web developers, both in UI creation and application logic. Once you've been developing with Web forms for a while, you'll wonder how you ever lived without them!

17. Accessing Data with ASP.Net: a. setup a database connection b. open the database connection c. fill a dataset with the desired date d. setup a dataview to display the data e. bind a server control to the dataview through the databinding method of the control.

18. ADO.NET full embraces XML, allowing it to communicate with XML compliant applications. ADO.Net revolves around the dataset. A dataset is a memory resident data store that provides a consistent program model for accessing data. A data set contains sets of data, constraints, relationships, and even multiple tables.

19. There are two ways to use a data store: a. Fill it with another data store c) create your own data store. The Data store has a table collections called ds.tables("name"). The ds.tables("name").primary=datacolumn defines the primary key where the datacolumn has two parameters a name and data type. Other columns can be defined for columns collection in by using ds.tables("name").columns.add(datacollection). Data Relationships form follows as, dataRelations("name",datacolumn1,datacolumn2) and joins the relations collection ds.tables("name").relations.add(datarelations). Last Datarows can be inserted using dr=new datarow where dr(index)=value and the index is the field index assigned a value. The datarow joins the ds.tables("name").rows.add(datarow), the datarows collection.

20. ADO.Net Dataset has a number of advantages: Scalability - no locks or active connections; Firewalls - XML is completely firewall proof; Programmability - does not require use of data contructs; sharing data - no data conversions are required; relationships - object structure maintains the relationship; data access - non sequential access to the multiple table data.

21. Many companies try to build propriety communication systems that allow services to be exchanged, but these are often to expensive and complicated to maintain. A web service is a programmable object that provides functionality that's accessible to any number of systems over the internet. Web services rely on the fact that any type of system or application can use http.

22. Why use web services. Corporations are trying to tie traditional applications together into a single composite entity. Web services provide a very simple mechanism for applications to communicate with each other. With Webservices you can reuse code that other people have developed. Web service files are vb.net or c# files that end in an .asmx extension.

23. A Webservice uses an XML format call the Service Description Language (SDL) to tell the clients what can be done with the service. Webservices have methods just as regular classes and business objects do.

24. Discover is the process by which a client finds out about a Web Service. Calling the service from code is simple.
Dim objCalculator As New CalculatorService

I might be crazy, but reading this book was actually a lot of fun! It covers everything you need to get going with ASP.NET. The focus early on with Access databases was a little rough for me because i was looking for more info on SQL (it does cover sql later on btw). The layout of the lessons felt good, and the author wasn't to 'rambley', which made it easy to read for hours and hours.

I spent 2 months on day 1. If the author had simply added, "If you can't install IIS, you can use Personal Web Server, which comes free from Microsoft," it would have saved me a lot of time. I gave up on the book.

Although the technical examples are acceptable, I found it difficult to follow the book and progress at a decent pace.

When you start the book, I believe you start with the objective of either learning VB or C# and then possibly learning the other language at a later stage. Some people may have the objective of both languages at the same time, however these I believe would be in the minority.

This is where I found the layout of the book to be atrocious. The author flips from one language to the other and then discusses general things in the next paragraph.

In my opinion, it would be very easy to put a VB identifier or picture next to the VB stuff and a C# identifier or picture next to the C# stuff to make it easy for the reader to work on the stuff s/he is interested in.

It's as if the book was written for VB and then the C# stuff was plugged in afterwards in a hurry to widen the audience. This is very confusing and slows your progress down because you are continuously wasting time by reading the C# stuff if you want to focus on VB and vice versa.

A little bit of thought on the layout would go a long way to improve the readability of the book.

My second criticism of the book is my personal choice and opinion. I believe the examples should be presented with a decent coding tool such as Visual Studio 2003 / 2005 and not in Notepad. I think very few (professional) developers nowadays code in NotePad. Even a free tool from Microsoft such as one of the Express Editions would be a better editing tool than NotePad.

I am perplexed at the users that rated this publication highly and I would be very interested in speaking with them to find out how they got the codes to work. About 80% of the codes that I type from this book result in me reiceiving errors in my application - even if I type it exactly the way the book does! I do not understand why Sams publishing would allow this book to be published and I would STRONGLY reccomend that browsers interested in this book do not purchase it. Especially if you are new to programming because it is extremely confusing for new users. I have a background in programming and I find it confusing at times. However the book's biggest disadvantage is that is the coding errors! I even downloaded the codes directly from the publisher and they still throw errors. So I know its not my mistake in typing them out because the downloaded ones from the publisher do not work either!

Why is a Supreme Court justice writing a book? Because he's trying to influence public opinion. And it's one more sign that the Supreme Court has become politicized. It has made decisions in the past which should have been made by legislators, such as Roe v. Wade and Brown v. Board of Education. A glaring example of politicization was the Court's rushed Bush v. Gore decision in which the Court essentially picked the winner, siding in a highly partisan dispute.

The Framers never intended for nine unelected people to have such sweeping power. They're unaccountable to voters. And they serve as long as they wish. Much of the judicial abuse of power can be traced back to 1803 with Chief Justice Marshall's Marbury v. Madison decision which gave the court power to strike down legislative acts which it deemed "unconstitutional" and many critics have examined the Constitution and have found no legal basis for this partisan-motivated blatant grab for power. Gradually the Supreme Court has sided with a growing tendency for political power to gravitate to Washington; specific rulings over time and creative interpretations of the Constitution's commerce clause eroded states' authority to regulate their own economies. Today, Washington regulates much of the economy, and it does this badly, in my view.

This book has some good ideas about contrasting ancient with modern liberty, about judicial restraint, about Breyer's sense of the constitution, but it's much more important now to ignore the partisan ramblings of an unelected legislator who wears the garments of justice, and rather examine America.

America is in deep trouble. There is a dangerous concentration of power within Washington in the presidency. There are structural flaws in the Constitution which include gerrymandering, underrepresentation of voters from populous states in the Senate, a confusing electoral college process, no term limits for Supreme Court justices, lack of representation for D.C. voters, inability to get rid of an incompetent or ill president quickly, abuse of the presidential pardon, the danger of martial law if there's a substantial attack on Congress, and so forth.

I see even more serious flaws. The foreign policy architecture places too much authority in the hands of one overburdened official -- the president -- so American foreign policy is largely dependent on the quality of the president who can be distracted by domestic concerns as well as party politics. Second, the judiciary has taken it upon itself to ride herd over the legislature, and there have been intelligent arguments by foreign scholars such as Adam Tomkins that the judiciary is ill suited for this task (for example, courts have to wait for specific cases to bubble up before they can make a ruling). Third, the federal arrangement has become undone. State governments have lost considerable power to regulate their economies, and Washington has taken over the role of chief regulator, but it does this job badly. Fourth, citizenship is undefined. In my view it entails specific responsibilities including regular participation in local government meetings; however, most Americans are not true citizens but mere consumers, political zombies, angry and frustrated workers who are politically apathetic.

What has happened, in my view, is that corruption and rot and partisanship and gridlock have overwhelmed government so that it can't begin to face serious long term problems such as Social Security underfunding, environmental dangers, nuclear terrorism, financial meltdown. Washington can't fix itself.

So I am summoning a Second Constitutional Convention to meet in Independence Hall in Philadelphia beginning July 4th, 2009, and among my chosen delegates is Justice Breyer -- while I don't agree with all of his views, I think he should be there to help keep some continuity with the present Constitution.

I think delegates should think seriously about how to prevent nuclear terrorism. Many experts see terrorism as essentially a government and military and police problem. And I think that's a mistake. I think terrorism is a bigger problem -- it's a citizens' problem. We're the ones who suffer when it happens. So citizens need to prevent it. And as citizens we have wider latitude and authority to act than government officials have.

Terrorism, in my view, is "violence against individual rights". Begin with my definition and a solution will follow. One can suppose there are three types of terrorists -- criminals (neighbors who violate our rights), tyrants (our own government officials who violate our rights) and foreign terrorists (powerful individuals abroad or heads of state.) All three types of terrorism must be prevented, in my view. It's not enough for government by itself to try to fight terrorism, because in trying to fight terrorism, government may become a terrorist towards its own people. It's a multi-faceted problem, larger but solvable, in my view. We can't try to fight one form of terrorism by exacerbating another. But this happens routinely in airports: to prevent airline hijackings (crime) security guards frisk every passenger without cause (a form of tyranny that passengers put up with despite being treated like criminals.)

My book "Common Sense II: How to Prevent the Three Types of Terrorism" (Amazon & Kindle, 184 pages) gives a prevention strategy. You should buy my book, not Breyer's. The essential way to prevent each type of terrorism is the application of light (meaning information, exposure, awareness.) For example, to prevent crime, we must identify all movement in public while strengthening privacy. For this to happen, citizens must agree to such monitoring, and for this to happen, people must become real citizens, not merely apathetic consumers and shoppers which characterize most Americans today. Citizenship should be a contract between individual and state with specific responsibilities and privileges. It's possible to prevent every instance of home-grown terrorism using this method. The rest of my book shows how one can apply the concept of light to exposing the other types. For example, I think the architecture of government requires an overhaul so that America can make steady long-term foreign policy, consistently rewarding friends and punishing enemies; but today it can't do this because administrations change every eight years, sometimes after only four. I propose a revised architecture based on lessons from history and political philosophy.

My strategy will prevent all types of terrorism, including smuggled nuclear bombs. I challenge Justice Breyer to read my book and respond to my invitation to attend the Second Constitutional Convention. My strategy is brief, rational, non-religious, written by a citizen for citizens, non-technical, non-partisan. Be prepared: there are some controversial ideas (one expert found it "bracing"). But my book can protect America. It's plain logic from one citizen to another.

Overall, the existence of Breyer's book is a painful reminder that the Supreme Court has become politicized, arrogant, abusive. Don't buy Breyer's book; buy mine (on Amazon). I call Justice Breyer to serve as a delegate to the Second Constitutional Convention. And I challenge him to debate the merits of my strategy. Please write comments below urging him to attend.

Justice Breyer clearly lays out the differences in philosophy between "textualists" or "orginalists" on the Supreme Court and those who view things in context and in the changed world. It is an effective counter to Justice Scalia, well worth reading.

"Active Liberty" by Supreme Court Justice Steve Breyer is a well-written but very esoteric book about statutory and constitutional interpretation. Breyer defends a "consequentialist" approach to interpretation that would construe ambiguous laws so as to give real-world effect to their purposes (as revealed in text and structure, court precedents, and legislative and constitutional history). In the case of the Constitution, his approach would favor interpretations that promote popular participation in government, one of the Constitution's basic purposes.

Breyer writes clearly, his book is short, and the discussion draws on modern Supreme Court cases. Best of all, he provides a convincing alternative to fashionable "textualist" approaches to interpretation, which reject legislative history and would have courts stick to the "four corners" of texts, relying on hoary canons of interpretation to clarify ambiguous sections. As Breyer notes, textualism lacks clear Constitutional sanction, is far from transparent, does not guarantee objectivity (its main selling point), and ends up relying on consequentialist reasoning of its own.

Much of the argument of "Active Liberty" revolves around the distinction between so-called Ancient Liberty (the right to participate in government) and so-called Modern Liberty (the right to be free from government coercion). Both values are reflected in the Constitution, and Breyer's effort to strike a balance between them is the most interesting part of his book. While his focus is too narrow for "Active Liberty" to be a major contribution to popular understanding of our legal system, it is a welcome counterpoint -- both jurisprudential and stylistic -- to Scalia's bombastic "A Matter of Interpretation," which dealt with the same issue.

The next time I read about a decision by the Supremes that leaves me scratching my head and wondering, "What were they thinking?", I've at least got this little book by Justice Breyer to give me one or two clues. ACTIVE LIBERTY: INTERPRETING OUR DEMOCRATIC CONSTITUTION is a blueprint explaining the components of judicial activism, and pleads its argument against what Breyer terms Constitutional "textualists."

The foundation of Breyer's premise has to do with the democratic compatibility of "ancient", or active liberty (the inclination of citizens to participate in self-government), and "modern" liberty (the protection of individual rights and freedoms). Once these two liberties are balanced, judicial decisions must be rendered based on the Constitution's "democratic objective." But what is the democratic objective? Upon reading this book, it becomes readily evident a conservative textualist (Justice Scalia, for example) can tell you what the Constitution says, and what its objective is--but an active libertarian will interpret the document to conform to the events of the day based upon precedent, societal/cultural conditions, and consequences. In other words, as Justice Breyer argues, affirmative action is good in some cases, bad in others; the posting of the Ten Commandments is wrong in one venue, but perfectly acceptable in another. Such judicial selective subjectivity is a necessity, argues the progressive jurist, based on a country that is in constant change.

So we arrive at the conclusion: A Living Constitution is just like having your cake, and eating it, too. If there's a screw-up, we can always come down on the other side of a decision tomorrow. Live and learn. ACTIVE LIBERTY: INTERPRETING OUR DEMOCRATIC CONSTITUTION is a quick, if not troubling read. Con: We see, firsthand, how the progressive jurists can stretch and distort any issue to conform to "Constitutionality"; Pro: We get up close and personal into the mental machinations of a Supreme Court justice. Kind of scary, but interesting, too.
--D. Mikels, Author, The Reckoning

Justice Stephen Breyer, in this short book, clearly describes his judicial philosophy. "Short" is one of the aspects recommending "Active Liberty." The non-lawyer reader might find some of Justice Breyer's explanations a bit involved and sometimes less well defined, and the professional attorney reader might find the text a bit too easy, though some attorneys could take a lesson in brevity from this work! The author spends his book space explaining his view of the tension between "active liberty" and "modern liberty," between "textualism" and the previous two "liberties," and between "judicial modesty" and something he doesn't name particularly well ("judicial IMmodesty"?). He does this using six actual cases, and a few hypothetical examples.

Frankly, a discerning reader could wonder if much of those "tensions" mentioned above are made-up differences. Equally frankly, Justice Breyer tells us that such tensions are his view of the real bread-and-butter Supreme Court legal work. He freely admits to the subjectiveness which his viewpoint influences Supreme Court decisions, and points out that more textual (objective, narrower) approaches also contain subjectivity. True enough. But narrower and more objective approaches deal with Constitutional terms like "due process," "just compensation," and "public use." These ought to busy our justices enough without being concerned with guessing future outcomes or majority wishes, or other matters best handled by the lawmaking arm of our government. Mr. Justice Breyer's approach at times seems like an excuse to be less exact on formal decisions - justified inconsistency [the last sentence is merely an opinion by this reviewer!]

Nevertheless, where else can one pick up a book by a sitting Supreme Court justice which explains his/her thinking process? Especially if that book is short enough, and usually worded simply enough to be read easily and relatively quickly. Buy the book, or check it out from the library, and this will indeed show decent respect for the author.

This books goes back and forth between VB.net and C#.net
and Refer to Old ASP. (I never used old ASP)
Basically, I paid money thinking that I am getting a book on ASP.net with VB.net.
Rally feel like I wasted the money, as I am not happy with my purchase.
This book may be good for people who know both VB.net and C#.net
Otherwise don't waste your money.

The first thing you'll notice is that the book is mainly concentrated using vb.net. That is fine, but looking at the code as a c++, c#, java programmer just begins to drive me nuts. If you want the c# examples, you have to download them. If you like to write the code to help you learn, this book is not for you. Chapters 5 and 6 are almost wholly useless as far as examples go, but a decent read for understanding how asp.net works. The web services and mobile controls were nice. The datastore chapters were good for understanding asp.net. I would have expected to see more OO design in the professional book. If you have an asp.net book already, this won't bring many new revelations to you. If you are looking for a single asp.net book, this is a decent one to have. If you are beginning asp.net, this book is not for you, as the examples just aren't concise or clear enough.

In short the book isn't worth it if you have some asp.net books already. If you are developing with asp.net currently, this may be a decent reference. However, you might find more use using MSDN for reference. A sub par wrox book.

I am not at all satisfied with this book ..I usually do not write reviews ..But just wanted to caution you all
I brought the book for my Certification Study ...and as a reference .
But the way the book is written , you are confused .
and The way it is organised , you are lost!!
Like If i need some perticular thing,sometimes i am clueless as to which topic I should look .
I would suggest the MCSD/MCAD book by Amit Kalani .
Before you buy the book see the differnce the way these books are wrtiiten in the preview pages
and If you are plaaning to buy a book for certification , like me .. wrox is not for you .I really regret spending my money on wrox .

I got this when it was basically the only book out there. Since then, whenever I have an ASP.NET problem I open this book, search vainly through the 1300 pages for coherent help, then give up and go to google groups. With all that writing you'd think that I would occasionally find my answers in there...

This book is 1300 pages of [stuff]. Its written by about 10 people who obviously didn't look at each others segments because they repeat the same stuff over and over. If they took out all the information that was repeated throughout the book it would be about 300 pages. I was better served by the MSDN documentation. Wrox used to have a good reputation for solid books but it seems like quantity over quality is what they are after.

It is not often I pass a hard judgement on something. I read some excerpts on the web and bought this book in hopes it was very authoritive. Most of the code examples did not work, even after I downloaded the errata. I had to have one window open on the W3C site in order to track the errors and to get some example to work. When the author went the VB examples, there was no lead in. I recommend the authors' website, but not this book.

This really is a poor reference and tutorial. But...
I haven't found anything better.

This book doesn't cover all detailed XML is got for you, and it doesn't intend to either. However, Wilson's book gave me a good foundation to explore the XML world. Good choice if you want to start nice and simple, and then focus on details later. Don't get me wrong, this is not a brochure either; it does come with plenty source code and examples.

After a mere twenty-two pages into the book, I was starting to doubt the usefulness of this book. The very top of page 22 talks about "examples above" on handling special characters. Flip back to page 21, however, go to the bottom of the page and read about examples that "are described below". I give up, are the examples on the magical page 21 1/2?

While other reviewers seem willing to let slide the number of typos, omitions and code examples that simply don't work, I am less forgiving. I got this book on the assumption that I would be able to learn how to integrate XML with my knowledge of ASP. Most examples in this book, however, are for Visual Basic, and while that only requires little to moderate tweaking, the pure ASP examples in this book are almost non-existant.

Add in the fact that the book constantly interrupts a lesson to add new concepts we're supposed to either immediately understand, or bookmark and thumb through the book hoping they remembered to include the examples, makes this a frustrating book to learn from. Doing a quick search on Google for "XML help basics" gave me more insight into XML in just a few minutes than reading this book for a few hours did.

I agree with a number of other reviewers, skip this book. It is more frustrating than it's worth. Shame too, cause it starts out strong and then just fades away.

Code Examples are REDUNDANT.
Code Examples are INCOMPLETE in the book. (Even the "Complete" examples. Had to download the source code and go line by line to figure out what was "missing". VERY FRUSTRATING.

Book skips arround quite a bit and is confusing at times. The Summary Case (3 tier architecture) which I was looking forward to was pretty much......um USELESS.

Oh well, I didn't listen to the others, maybe you will listen to me. Take a pen, paper and write down the 3 useful pages in this book and save your money.

I really enjoyed the SE Using ASP book. Generally, I like a books that tie everything together. My hat's off to this book for accomplishment. It covers all the details of ASP like a champ and then provides a great launching pad that I needed to build 3-tier web applications. I also liked it because it didn't insult my intelligence with simple examples. It made me think out of the box that most books like to keep you in .

ASP can be a handfull for those who are new to programming or who program other languages like JAVA or C/C++ like myself. For instance when you create a if statement block in ASP you have to start with a "if ... then" and end the block with a "end if". Which drove me crazy for a while, I kept using curly braces. These little differences are well documented and explained in the book. I usually go by examples when I'm programming a new language, and this book helped me through it. I would still recommend you use JSP or PHP if you have the choice of picking your language, but if you have to use ASP I would buy a book like this one to help you through.

I found this book very useful to give out to our web development staff as a reference tool. The newer team members found the book difficult to follow because the numerous typographical errors in the book. But overall, like most books from Que, it made a good addition to our library.

This book stands alone among the horde of ASP books available! Even though there are a couple of obvious typos, this book covers it all! It ties every part of the development aspect together and servers as a great guidebook and reference book. I give the other ASP books to my junior level developers to learn from - but my senior staff also turns to this book as the go-to ASP reference. Definitely money well-spent!

I made the mistake of buying the book as well, before consulting the online reviews (I will never do that again). I knew neither ASP nor VBScript going in. Nonetheless, I could tell right off the bat that there were errors on almost every page. At one point, I was even turned off to the whole idea of ASP. This has since changed - I got the Beginning and professional ASP books (Ben Francis et al - 2 seperate books) and they are way, way better. So in conclusion - DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK!

I got this book from a friend and after reading a few chapters I checked the Amazon reviews to see if "it was just me" or if this book was horrible. I was surprised to see it had even 3 1/2 starts. Then I read the reviews carefully...

Just days after the book came out, there was a rush of excellent reviews, most of which where only a few sentence long and lacked any detail. Then reality set in. People who really read it, universally hated it. -- And gave detailed examples why.

Now, I'm not going to say the original reviews where astroturf... but read them in order and watch the dates. Then consider you have a book with 14 authors all of whom use the internet and know the power of good Amazon reviews...

Things just don't add up.

This is definitely a good book for developers having good knowledge of ASP and XML and how to integrate XML in ASP. I just loved this book. People who say they don't like it, they have not read the book I am sure. Its sure worth the money!

This book was a real dissapointment.

I LOVE wrox ASP 3.0 Ref and ADO 2.6 Ref. Maybe Wrox should have taken that approach with this book -- instead of trying to act like this book can in any way teach anything about XML.

The examples in this book are horrid, they aren't in depth enough, and more importantly, don't even correspond well with each other.

Too many of the chapters jump into the middle of a subject, then try to work back to the beginning and then forward to the end.

Trust me, I've read the first 5-7 chapters of this book and finally got so sick of all the ambiguity that I went out to the MS Site and learned more in 30 minutes there than I ever could have with this book.

Some of the case studies in the back are nice, and this book would have made a great reference (had they gone that route), but it is a horrible book to learn how to integrate XML with ASP.

Save your money.

Excellent! for ones who are pro to ASP and need to intergrate XML with ASP! A must buy!

I'm a big fan of the WROX publications (for ASP in particular), but this book was a disappointment. The writing was choppy - as you might expect from a book with 14 guys on the cover. The examples were cryptic and raise more questions than they answer.

The author(s) seem to me to be attempting to impress us (and each other) with their knowledge of the subject rather than really trying to write a digestible explanation of ways to utilize XML in an ASP environment.