Rating:  - Good Tech. but not a good presentation and tough langauge
Its good to know the underpinnings of any technology. But my sincere suggesstion to Dino would be to consider making the presentation technique an interesting one with a complete practical exapmle for any future books he writes or perhaps a revised edition of the same book . As of now all examples are unrealistic and also just bits and pieces. Examples could be more realistic and complete, that can be applied to a more practical scenario. Even a technical description, if it goes with a good and fairly simple example that can be applied to a practical scenario, it would make the book a great success and will make more people read. To say the truth, I use this book just to glance through when I have doubts but the title means that you can use it to learn ASP.NET. Because of the language, presentation and examples used, I dont get motivated to read it continuously. But the teachnical stuff is really good. Its just the language, presentation and examples needs to be refined and improved. In general, a useful book for ASP.NET if anyone wants to get a in depth knowledge of ASP.NET.
Rating: - Great for intermediate to advanced programmers
Unlike some of the other reviewers here, I found this book to be very approachable. Those of you who may've purchased Petzold's definitive work on winapi, this book is much like that. I wouldn't recommend either one to a newbie, but in the right hands this book is a great tool.
First, I found the reading very easy to follow. Some of the other reviewers felt that Mr. Esposito's writing was sub-par, even flaunting, but I've yet to run into anything that seemed intentionally archaic or cryptic, everything seemed to fit quite nicely.
In particular, some of the words brought up by other reviewers that they didn't like are fairly common terms in mathematics that anyone who has been exposed to lower division calculus classes should know already.
Second, I like the wealth of knowledge in this book. Most programming books aren't meant to be read from cover to cover (at least, none of the ones that cover topics in-depth), and this book is no different. If you're learning asp.net, you'll want other resources to get you started. Once you get started, use this book as a reference.
The reason I'm giving this book 4 stars is the sheer lack of examples. As one of the other reviewers mentioned, Mr. Esposito gives a wealth of information, but the examples provided are painfully short, under-documented, cryptic, and in many cases useless. Especially with the database related stuff I was forced to find examples elsewhere. Other than perhaps the first chapter or two, which have 5-10 line aspx examples, I saw no fully working examples. At the very least Mr. Esposito could have provided a CD with example sourcecode & referenced it from the book, but the book doesn't come with that luxury either.
As a companion to this book, I would recommend getting Jeffrey Richter's Applied .NET programming book, which covers the .net framework mainly from a C# standpoint. This asp.net book doesn't go into detail on a lot of the .net topics that are fairly essential in my book, especially exception handling, and Richter's book covers it nicely.
Rating:  - Dino knows (his stuff)
If you code ASP.Net, you will need this book after you go through the step-by-step books. Dino is very knowledgable regarding ASP.Net and should be considered as one of the best writers on the subject.
Rating:  - Too difficult to find useful information from this big tome
This book is an attempt to explain every detail of "How ASP.NET Works" rather than how to write application programs under ASP.NET. And a rather unsuccessful attempt at that.
Admittedly, it will be helpful to understand the nuts and bolts before taking the plunge to write an ASP.NET application, but the author's approach suggests that he simply diassembled the .NET framework using some reflector and tried to translate the diassembled code listing into paragraphs of dry discription.
Many key concepts like how code-behind works in ASP.NET is explained without any logical order.
I would also join the other reviewer in complaining that Dino, an Italian, tried to abuse the English language in a very childish fashion, thinking that he can become a good writer just by throwing in weird phrases gleaned maybe from an old dictionary. The net result is that the text in this book reads extremely strange, oftentimes you have to guess what he's driving at. It will be far better for him to write it in Italian and pay for a good translator to do a decent job.
To be frank, Dino's technical expertise is excellent, just that he doesn't know how to put them into plain English.
The bottom line: Don't buy this book, no matter what background you are from. It's too frustrating to read. Unless you want to help improve it by editing the whole tome and send it to MS Press.
Rating: - Good book but like others have said...very meaty.
This is definitely a very technical and very comprehensive book. I haven't dealt with many others but I would suspect this is probably one of the best. Be warned: it is not a tutorial, it is an extremely dense read.
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