Looking for books and resources about ASP.NET 2.0

Do you know any good books on ASP.NET 2.0? Or some serious online resources?

I can say I have an extensive collection of books, but I am looking for serious stuff, with writers doing their code the right way, and not using the declarative way of declaring a datasource for example.

I am struggling most of the time with SqlDatasource because if you don't use the lazy declarative option, you need to 'plumb' everything in the code behind and it's quite hard to know which event is the right one to use.

Any book I have (and some are really excellent) have the datasource embedded with the ASPX page. I want to learn the right way separating the code from the presentation.

 Also do you know any good book about Microsoft Ajax?

Thanks for any good reference!

 

4 Comments

  • Tsk, tsk. Declarative data sources are fine. Just because you don't get it is no good reason to badmouth it.

  • Joe I disagree !Declarative data sources are bad, and a lot of my peers share the same point of view.
    Something wrong too: in declarative mode the framework do the events plumbing for you, in code you still have to do it and no book I have show how! This is not the right way to learn something.
    Look at all the different events linked to a DetailsView control, amazing!
    I am against declarative programming, because it's messy and encourage lazyness!

  • Thanks Abdullah, sounds interesting.

  • All the asp.net 2.0 specialized books I know use the declarative way. It's logical, the datasource controls probably are the most important addition to 1.1

    If ObjectDataSource instead SqlDataSource is enough for you, I enjoyed Marco Bellinaso's ASP.NET 2.0 Website Programming: Problem - Design - Solution ( Wrox Press ).
    He builds a CMS ( now an asp.net starter kit, thebeerhouse ) with properly BLL and DAL layers and for the UI uses HEAVY declarative stuff to connect the ObjectDataSource to visual controls.
    A nice read and well-architected solution.

    If you want to avoid ALL the datasource controls you probably are looking for a more architecture oriented book, but there aren't many in asp.net area.
    Lhotka in Expert Business objects 2º edition derives a control from objectdatasource to get a more decent architecture, but the rest of the book is about his framework that involves .net remoting and high architecture level decisions.
    And take a look to Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns: With Examples in C# and .NET, there are some sections dedicated to asp.net ( patterns, testing... ) but on a high level view too.

    There are good blog posts in the inet of Fredrik Normén,David Hayden, Ayende or Phil Haack about Model View Controller/Presenter in asp.net, and of course you have the MonoRail option.

    If you find a good book, let us know :)

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