Book recommendation

[Griff]

I wish to buy a book to help me with the following "adventure". I've tried
to specify what I need to achieve and my current level of ability.

What I want to achieve:
The decision has been made to completely replace an "enterprise-scale"
eCommerce application using the .NET framework. It will have to cope with
many hundreds of concurrent users, large amounts of data (multi-giga-byte
databases) and so must scale as much as possible (ignoring hardware
possibilities). It will have to use VB.NET as the underlying language.

My (and my colleagues) experience:
We are (we believe) experienced developers used to authoring n-Tiered COM+
applications. We are familiar to building component based systems using
disconnected record sets and calling these via an ultra thin ASP front end.
We have zero .NET experience. So, we need to replicate our current
capabilities in the .NET environment as quickly as possible.

Suggestions on the one-book I should be purchasing. Okay, two if need
be....

Thanks in advance

Griff

 

[Jeremy]

Book #1: Programming Microsoft ASP.NET by Dino Esposito (Microsoft Press,
2003): ISBN 0-7356-1903-4

Book #2 Microsoft ADO.NET (Core Reference) by David Sceppa (Microsoft Press,
2002): ISBN0-7356-1423-7

Both put their respective topics in perspective and contrast with other
similar/older technologies.

Good Luck

 

[Tom Dacon]

Griff, this response is on a tangent, since I'm not recommending a book
here.

This 'adventure', as you term it, has red flags waving all over it.

1. There's a lot of sentiment among opinion leaders in the .Net space that
doing a massive rewrite of an existing mature legacy application is
generally a poor idea. The amount of work and the necessary testing is
staggering, takes way longer than you expect, and is fraught with quality
problems throughout the process of bringing the new system to the same level
of quality and maturity as the system it replaces. For the trip to .Net,
this involves more than just a conversion to .Net language syntax;
generally, it involves a complete rearchitecture to take advantage of the
features of .Net. A simple conversion to the language syntax buys you next
to nothing; it costs you an immense amount of rework and testing for no
significant benefit. I won't even touch on the issues you'll have to face if
the legacy system is a moving target (i.e., there's ongoing development and
maintenance, possibly even being done by your team in parallel).

2. Your team is experienced in the legacy development tools and has no
experience in .Net. You don't say what languages you use, but apparently do
most of your work in the middle and lower tiers (the COM+ part). I'm
guessing here, but the ultra-thin ASP server front-end would most probably
be VBScript. The COM+ code could readily be C++, or possibly but less likely
VB6, which is not as popular for COM+ middle tier development because most
people don't know that it's a pretty good platform for that part of the
stack. If your skills are in C++, C# would be a better choice of
implementation language. If they're in VB6, VB.Net may be more familiar, but
there's not otherwise much to choose between them.

3. Getting up to fluency in .Net, regardless of your choice of development
language, can take six months or more of full-time skills development.
Perhaps a year, depending on how much time you can apply to it, and I assume
you will be retaining maintenance responsibilities on the legacy system.
During that process, most of the code you write will turn out to be
something that you'll later want to throw away. If you and your team are not
already fluent in object-oriented design and implementation, you'll need to
develop those skills as well. Believe it.

No doubt you're not the decision makers on this adventure, and most likely
you don't have any way to influence the schedules or the strategies. I'd do
some googling on the microsoft.public.dotnet.* newsgroups on large-scale
conversions and read some other opinions. Whatever you learn may help you in
educating the powers that be at your shop about the real costs and risks of
the strategy they're apparently fixed on.

On the other hand, if you proceed with it you're starting on a real
adventure in learning. .Net's been more fun than anything else I've done in
computing in the last thirty years or so.


OK, OK, some book recommendations:


Start here, no matter where else you go:

Moving to VB.Net, by Dan Appleman


Deep, technical, and thorough, from a couple of top people:

Essential .Net, Vol. 1, the Common Language Runtime, by Don Box and Ted
Pattison


A good overview of .Net programming in VB.Net, oriented toward the .Net
framework
(i.e., no Windows Forms, ASP.Net, or ADO.Net information to speak of):

Applied Microsoft .Net Framework Programming in Microsoft Visual Basic .Net,
by Jeff Richter and Francesco Balena, Microsoft Press


In addition to the above, you'll need to look for resources in, at a
minimum, the following areas:
ADO.Net database access
ASP.Net web application development
Web services distributed services, principally through HTTP
COM+ services the .Net framework EnterpriseServices namespace


Best of luck,
Tom Dacon
Dacon Software Consulting

 

[Earl]

Since you say 2 will do, just buy Visual Basic.Net by Francesco Balena and
ADO.Net by David Sceppa. Get back to us in a couple of months and we'll all
gather around the campfire and swap war stories.