The book provides exhaustive coverage of ASP.NET, guiding you from your first steps right up to the most advanced techniques, such as querying databases from within a web page and tuning your site for optimal performance. Within these pages, you’ll find tips for “best practices” and comprehensive discussions of key database and XML principles you need to know in order to be effective with ASP.NET. The book also emphasizes the invaluable coding techniques of object orientation and code behind, which will start you off on the track to building real – world web sites right from the beginningrather than just faking it with simplified coding practices.

If you think you’re well versed in ASP.NET, think again. This exceptional guide gives you a master class in site building with ASP.NET 3.5 and other cutting-edge Microsoft technologies. You learn how to develop rock-solid web portal applications that can withstand millions of hits every day while surviving scalability and security pressures — not just for mass-consumer homepages, but also for dashboards that deliver powerful content aggregation for enterprises.

Since the emergence of Google Maps, Ajax programming techniques have become one of the hottest topics in the programming arena. To date, the frameworks available for creating these applications have been complex and have separated the development of the client-side Ajax (on the user’s machine) from the server-side supporting technology (on the company’s machines). This separation has made development slow and difficult.

Delivering rich, Web 2.0-style experiences has never been easier. This book gives you a complete hands-on introduction to Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX 1.0, the new framework that offers many of the same benefits for Ajax development that ASP.NET provides for server-side development. With Programming ASP.NET AJAX, you’ll learn how to create professional, dynamic web pages with Ajax in no time.

Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 Databases: From Novice to Professional is a comprehensive introduction to connecting a website to many different data sourcesnot just databases. You’ll learn how to build a relational database, use SQL to communicate with it, and leverage both in your web applications.

You’ll also learn more about SQL Server 2005 XML features, XML serialization, and XML Web services. You’ll see how XML can be used to increase application efficiency and reach. Two helpful real-life case studies used throughout the book demonstrate the many ways that XML documents can be created, transformed, and transmitted to other systems using ASP.NET.