Programming .NET 3.5

Build N-Tier Applications with WPF, AJAX, Silverlight, LINQ, WCF, and More

By Jesse Liberty, Alex Horovitz
July 2008
Pages: 476
ISBN 10: 0-596-52756-X | ISBN 13: 9780596527563
Press Release
(4) (Average of 4 Customer Reviews)

Description

Bestselling author Jesse Liberty and industry expert Alex Horovitz uncover the common threads that unite the .NET 3.5 technologies, so you can benefit from the best practices and architectural patterns baked into the new Microsoft frameworks. The book offers a "Grand Tour" of .NET 3.5 that describes how the principal technologies can be used together, with Ajax, to build modern n-tier and service-oriented applications.

Full Description

.NET 3.5 will help you create better Windows applications, build Web Services that are more powerful, implement new Workflow projects and dramatically enhance the user's experience. But it does so with what appears to be a collection of disparate technologies. In Programming .NET 3.5, bestselling author Jesse Liberty and industry expert Alex Horovitz uncover the common threads that unite the .NET 3.5 technologies, so you can benefit from the best practices and architectural patterns baked into this newest generation of Microsoft frameworks.

While single-topic .NET 3.5 books delve into Windows Presentation Foundation and the other frameworks in greater detail, Programming .NET 3.5 offers a "Grand Tour" of the release that describes how the four principal technologies can be used together, with Ajax, to build modern n-tier and service-oriented applications. Developers have struggled to implement these patterns with previous versions of the .NET Framework, but this hands-on guide uses real-world examples and fully annotated source code to demonstrate how .NET 3.5 can make it easy.

The concepts and technologies that this book covers include:

XAML -- Microsoft's new XML-based markup language for UI, used with WPF
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) -- a new presentation framework and graphics subsystem for Windows that puts Vista-like effect in your grasp
Ajax
Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) - a new standards-based framework that enables applications to communicate across a network using a variety of protocols
Workflow Foundation (WF) -- framework for defining, executing, and managing workflows
CardSpace -- framework for managing the identities of your users

You'll learn how to use each of the four frameworks alone and in concert to build a series of meaningful example applications. Examples are written in C#, and all of the source code will be available for download at both the O'Reilly and the authors' site, which offers access to a free support forum.

Between them, authors Jesse Liberty and Alex Horovitz have nearly forty years of experience in delivering commercial applications for companies such as Citibank, Apple, AT&T, NeXt, PBS, Ziff Davis, and dozens of smaller organizations. Their combined experience is valuable for telling the story of .NET 3.5 and how it will shorten the development life cycle for applications developers, and enhance your productivity.

Featured customer reviews

Outdated content, October 23 2008

Rating:

Submitted by Anonymous Reader [Respond | View]

I saw the reviews on this book and looked promising. I ordered the book from an Internet retailler and got it a week ago. I started reading and trying out the examples. To my surprise, the examples/materials are very much outdated. I cannot find any Errata's for the book that provides suggestions and fixes. For example, the code for ASP.NET MVC, which actually tap my fancy and decision for buying the book, was based on an older preview and I get a lot of errors trying the examples even with the beta version of ASP.NET MVC. Check out the examples from pages 235-245 particularly the sections on Controllers and Views. The issue here is that these authors are just writing books as soon as some new technology is still is in the oven and there is no follow-up when the technology is baked. I don't know how this problem can be solved but I hope that the authors and publisher provides on-going erratas so that the content is current. Otherwise, all I have is another useless book because I have to digged through other materials on the internet to just make up the difference. The reason why I buy these technical books is because I expect them to be more accurate and a single point of reference for me to get started with the technology.

It's a well presented book, but where is the source code?, August 08 2008

Rating:

Submitted by Anonymous Reader [Respond | View]

The is a great book. It covers a lot of topics, and is very well written. Most of us where hit by a flood of new .net technologies. I need to get up to speed and this is a good 1st book on 3.5.

Like to other review pointed out Where is the d@mn source code! This book is worthless to me otherwise. If it not available that this time at least let us know when it will be! I'm holding my breath.

-Stu

It's a well presented book, but where is the source code?, August 07 2008

Rating:

Submitted by Htt [Respond | View]

OK, so I wrote a review giving this book a Definitive score. Now halfway through the sample projects they refer to several websites that contain source code, but the code is not there and the samples require files that aren't in the book!

Ouch, it seems the authors were late supplying source code for other books as well.

Because of this I must re-evaluate my scoring. It's Good but not definitive because we can't step through the code.

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The overview I was looking for, August 07 2008

Rating:

Submitted by Tom [Respond | View]

This book provided me the overview of new technologies coming out of Microsoft that was sorely needed. It covers WPF, WCF, WF, AJAX and MS implementations of software patterns in the broad strokes necessary to show how they integrate without getting bogged down in too much detail. Each of these technologies is complex and books often spend too much time describing the api and never get to the larger picture of how they work together. Thanks.

Media reviews
"The book is a good entry to the world of .NET 3.5 because it gives you an idea about every part and what it is good for. I rate this book a 7. The authors scratch the surface of every topic and choose an appropriate style to explain it. You can tell that they thought about how to explain each topic on it's own and give you not just the "how" but also the "why". "
-- Adrian Lambeck, Slashdot

"The book is very useful if you are interested in working with XML. It starts step by step and get harder through the book."
-- Samy S. El-tawab, Amazon.com

"You can easily pick up this book and enjoy the introductions to technologies such as Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation, ASP.NET MVC, and Silverlight... That said, if you only pick up the book for the introduction to each technology, you'll be missing the best that this book has to offer. Unlike most technology books these days, this book explains the topics within the context of best practices and real world scenarios."
-- Chris Stewart, Amazon.com

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"The book is a good entry to the world of .NET 3.5 because it gives you an idea about every part and what it is good for. "
--Adrian Lambeck, Slashdot