This is an excellent companion book to 'Professional Active Server Pages'. Like most O'Reilly Nutshell texts, this book is designed more as a reference aid, rather than a learning text. If you buy both the Professional ASP tome, and this reference guide, you've bought everything you need for ASP.

This is an excellent companion book to 'Professional Active Server Pages'. Like most O'Reilly Nutshell texts, this book is designed more as a reference aid, rather than a learning text. If you buy both the Professional ASP tome, and this reference guide, you've bought everything you need for ASP.

As a student in college, I want to learn some advanced web programming language. I found this book is very helpful for beginner. I also get a discount from couponsky.com when buying this book. This book is not only useful for beginner's studying, you also can take it as reference after you finish the studying. I recommend this book to the beginners in ASP.

Somewhat in a rush and while trying to learn ASP I purchased this book. I thought it was aweful and it collected dust for nearly 6 months while I searched elsehwere to boot myself up on ASP. However, now that I'm fairly proficient at ASP, this book has been helpful as a reference. No so much for the actual reference value but becasue the sample code helps put things in perspective.

I was an ASP programmer several years ago after which I moved to a different technology. Now, I need to come to speed on .NET, but unfortunately all the ASP.NET books make innumerous references to the old ASP which I have almost forgotten.

The book helped me *VERY* quickly go through ASP 3.0 and now I feel very comfortable reading the .NET books and can now truly appreciate ASP.NET.

A GREAT reference book!

Be warned, if like I did, you think that this is the only book you'll need to be able to build ASP scripts; you're very much mistaken. Whenever I recommend this book, I always recommend it alongside VBScript in a Nutshell as you really need knowledge of an ASP supported scripting language before you can use ASP in a Nutshell to it's full potential!

This is yet another reference book that I've owned both editions of because I thought it was useful enough to update; but then, my site is developed using ASP, so I'm probably biased in this respect. Ok, so I got the 1st Edition late on in the game and was a little reluctant to part with cash for the new edition - but as IIS 5 started to become standard for Windows hosting, and I had access to it after getting Windows XP Pro... I thought it was about time I updated it.

ASP in a Nutshell is my first point of reference when I'm looking up the properties of a particular ASP object. I've also found it an invaluable guide for connecting and manipulating ASP scripts that used ADO for data storage and manipulation. For a while it was the only book I owned that covered the issue of connecting ASP scripts to databases.

Most of the installable components I'd never heard of before getting the book, just as well really because few are of much use - even if they aren't available on your system, a lot can be easily reproduced. The areas I find myself most frequently refering to are the main set of ASP objects, the FileSystem Object and the ActiveX Data Objects. These go into enough detail to keep all but the experienced programmers happy.

For those new to the Windows scene, there is a brief but detailed guide to setting up ASP to work with your IIS server; but it's hardly rocket science since a clean install of IIS will set up most (if not all) of what you need anyway! If you use ASP regularly, or you intend to, then ASP in a Nutshell should be on your desktop... but please remember it won't fulfill all your ASP development needs without another book to fill in the language gaps. What book you choose to accompany it depends on your language and experience... I personally like VBScript in a Nutshell.

This is a wonderful reference. It is not for the beginner, but it is easy to understand and very straightforward with great, consise examples. Truely a find, it replaced multiple other ASP books that I had. It has good descriptions of every ASP object, server side includes, global.asa ActiveX objects and more. Buy this book now.

This is a wonderful reference. It is not for the beginner, but it is easy to understand and very straightforward with great, consise examples. Truely a find, it replaced multiple other ASP books that I had. It has good descriptions of every ASP object, server side includes, global.asa ActiveX objects and more. Buy this book now.

This book is good for what it's suppose to be: a light reference for intermediate or better programmers. It covers every important topic like ADO and FileSystemObject. It doesn't go into detail on every property or method, but it tries to cover all the major ones clearly with good examples. Don't look to this book as a tutorial or a comprehensive reference; it's more like a quick lookup for topics you're at least partly familiar with.

I am a longtime ASP developer, and I do this for a living. I've read any number of ASP books written by people who don't know what they're talking about, but this one is definitely the very worst. The book is poorly formatted, poorly written, riddled with technical errors, and is a total waste of your time if you a serious developer. I wouldn't waste my money on this turkey.

I had planned for this book to assist more in learning about ASP and use as a quick reference with examples; however I feel that this is for a more experienced programmer that just need a desktop quick reference (as it is sub-titled). I'm never disappointed with O-Reilly books, however I guess I had a different expectation for this book.

This book is not for the complete ASP beginner, but for someone wanting an introduction and reference to the objects (e.g., request, response, session) and components (e.g., ad rotator, page counter, file access). Although the examples in this book are in VBScript this book should not be thought of as a reference for VBScript. Though short, the examples were enough to start me using the features, for example setting a session timeout, using a collections reference or sending email from a script. I did find the examples on the ActiveX Data Objects a little sparse and the author admits, "there are several more advanced topics". I had previously found the global.asa file and #include files somewhat mysterious so this chapter was helpful.

With the availability of online documentation, I found the author advise about using the feature or limitations more valuable than details of the parameters. There is enough of an introduction to give you the concepts in most areas. Additionally the specification of what driver is needed for a component can be helpful if there are problems. I will continue to use this book in conjunction with online documentation.

I recently made a successful transition from client server to web applications. I credit part of the success to this book. As a VB programmer, I wasn't interested in a long book on all aspects of the VBScript language and COM objects. What I needed was a book that explained the HTTP protocol and ASP object models. This book filled that function exactly.

This is not a good book for programming novices, and will be no more helpful than a reference manual would be to them. However, experienced VB programmers will see it as fulfilling both instructional and reference roles. It is a book you will read on repeated occasions and always keep close at hand.

This book is titled "In a nutshell" and appropriately so. I have over 4 years experience with server side scripting with Perl and PHP and had some familiarity with ASP before I bought this book. I bought it mainly as a reference to help me look up how to do thing I already knew how to do in those other languages with ASP.

For that purpose, it has been a great resource. It has helped identify the objects that are available from ASP while providing some nice code snippets with which to see what I was looking up in action. I was able to successfully code a practice project in less that a week, and will definably use this book for any future ASP project that I work on.

I've been a fan of O'Reiley "In a nutshell" books since picking up Director and Lingo in a nutshell and would highly recommend this book as a reference resource. As for using it to learn server side scripting, you might be better to get a more in depth training book instead.

Someone handed me this book when I was just starting out with ASP. It took me days to even figure out where to start! By that time, I was so frustrated I went out and bought a tutorial and started from scratch- since that was still about all I knew after going from cover to cover of this book.
While this book can be a helpful reference now, I find myself never touching it. There are plenty of better reference books out there. Definately not worth the frustration.

I'm not sure I can add much to the other reviews here, other than to state that the book is only partially updated for IIS 5.0 (Windows 2000) in my opinion. Nearly 30 pages are devoted to coverage of CDONTS, none of which will operate on any out-of-the-box Windows 2000-based web server I know of.

There is zero coverage of CDO for Windows 2000 (a/k/a CDOSYS), which is considerably more powerful and flexible than CDONTS, and in my opinion, represents the "right" way to do things for any new code (even if CDONTS is available on *your* Windows 2000 Server).

Otherwise, this book is rapidly becoming my favorite ASP reference -- one that's a lot handier than pulling-up the MSDN Library web site every time I forget a property name or method syntax (which is a lot more often than I care to admit in public).

Like many programmers, I find the O'Reilly books to be invaluable and far above the average quality of books in this field. However, ASP In a Nutshell is a major disappointment. It is hard to use, missing information, and poorly formatted. I'd think twice about getting *any* title in the "Nutshell" series now.

I bought the book because I find long books on ASP so tedious. ASP is, after all, fairly simple stuff, so I was looking for a book to concisely present some "best-practice" techniques and reference material. Though this book is mainly a breakdown of the ASP objects (and other common objects used with ASP), it really gives no practical information about how to use these objects. (This was a serious hindrance to me when a project I was on was limited to MDAC 2.1.) And, they've arbitrarily skipped important properties and methods (like the BeginTrans method of ADO). You might expect an ASP reference to cover VBScript, at least a brief description of its syntax and reserved words, but none of that is presented here.

Furthermore, a lot of space is wasted by giving a complete ASP page as an example of every property and method they do cover, when just a few lines would do, giving them more space to discuss the way objects work together. Finally, the formatting is so plain it makes information hard to find and read.

In short: as a reference, it has major holes, and as a concise guide to ASP, it falls far short. The title is deceptive to say the least.

Don't buy this book if you want to read about ASP, but if you need a good reference guide, this is it. I use this book every day. This is a great book to look up methods and properties, check their return values, arguments, etc. Good sections on ADO and the Filesystem object as well. Highly recommended.

I was first introduced to this book by a fellow employee at my work. I'm 15-years old and I had minimal knowledge of ASP about 2 months ago. After learning the basic syntax of ASP and the conditionals, function declarations, etc., I really needed a good reference for ASP development.

I use this book to look up built-in-functions and objects on the fly. It provides a very good tabbed layout which makes it easy for me to find the functions.

The only thing I'm disappointed with this book is the explanation of some of the functions. It has very good examples for some functions, but only single line definitions for others. Aside this fact, I think this is a great reference to use, especially when you don't want to search through the MSDN Library collection.

I purchased this book to be both an introduction to ASP as well as a reference guide. I was not disappointed in either. For an introduction, the book is definitely geared more as a reference guide, so it assumes you have some scripting (or programming) background; VBS and/or VB being an advantage. Having both of these, I was very pleased to find that the sections of the book used as an introduction/mini-tutorial kept to the important information and did not stray off into personal stories or lengthy (yet ultimately pointless) explanations.

As a reference guide, I use it constantly. It is one of the few books that actually reside on my desk. The reference sections are divided into logical sections, and clearly give syntax, rules, explanations and (when appropriate) examples. The reference section even goes so far as to cover ADO; I found some did not, or if they did, they skimmed it. This reference guide provides excellent ADO references.

This guide has allowed me to jump very confidently into ASP scripting, and has yet to let me down. I have recommended this book to my peers, and I recommend it to you.

Another gem from O'Reilly! After having over 4 months of VB in school and reading A LOT on the subject I wanted to check into what ASP was all about. This book concentrates on all of the important aspects of ASP and leaves nothing behind. I currently have three ASP books in my library and this is the one that gets used the most. It's mostly a reference book but the examples it contains are really worth going over. If you are new to ASP as I am or are an experienced ASP programmer this book is for you. Worth a buy!

Overall this is a good reference book. Note that its not a tutorial book, so if you're looking for a tutorial on ASP scripting, then you should probably get another book.

While reading through this book I did notice a few minor errors, having to do with the core HTTP protocol, but I didn't notice any errors in the parts having to do with ASP.

Some material is repeated throughout, especially the explanation of object properties that are collections, but this is to be expected in a reference work. In a reference you want each section to be able to stand on its own, so some repetition is necessary.

As an ASP developer and back-end programmer, this is one book I keep within arms reach at all times! As can be expected, the book covers the ASP object model very well for a "pocket" reference and is logically presented in a way that makes it easy for me to look things up quickly.

The book also covers some of the add-in components such as the ad-rotator and MAPI services, and devotes an entire section to data interaction with ADODB (very useful!).

I only give this book four stars because I would have liked a VBScript reference included - but then, O'Conell also sell a VBScript reference!

All in all, an excellent purchase - it is easy to recommend this book if you are after an ASP reference.

This book's strengths are in the brief summaries that it presents for each of the various ASP Objects. They read like small chapters and you can usually find a short example that demonstrates a topic, enabling you to move on with your project.

As a reference, you can quickly find the names of all the properties, methods & collections for each object.

I gave the book 4 out of 5 because I would like to see a short paragraph in the back reference section devoted to each method and property. Some are given this treatment and others are ignored. I would find a complete reference more useful, even if it added 25 - 50 pages. Still, this is a very valuable book in my collection and the one I would be most likely to carry around with me.

ASP in a Nutshell should have really been titled "Quick Reference Guide". And even then, it's not really too complete. I found myself still going to other books or online to find stuff that I really just needed a reminder on, syntax wise.

Wow! This is undoubtedly the best 2nd edition to come along in a long time. This book is even more informative and concise than the first one. Although it is not a book for beginners it is a great reference manual for those of us in the field. O'reilly definitely knows how to put together a good book.

I initially purchased this book because I had to do some database integration work with a product that was ASP-based. I hadn't used ASP before, but assumed it would be like any other programming language. My experience with Nutshell books is that they provide good summaries for this sort of thing, and "ASP in a Nutshell" is no exception.

Most of the methods are shown with short examples -- which is great. Unfortunately, not all of the options to the methods are supported, even on MSFT-based environments, which I assume would be the dominant consumers of ASP. It would have been beneficial to indicate these a little more explicitly.

The book gives a good overview of the Response, Request, and Session objects. It makes an earnest attempt to cover Active Data Objects (ADO), however, as the author concedes, a thorough exploration of that is another book entirely. This is unfortunate because the primary reason people use ASP is to connect to a back-end database.

There is a reference to another, forthcoming book, "ADO: The Definitive Guide," by Jason T. Roff, which purports to cover these "advanced" topics. Although a "ASP in a Nutshell" is a competent reference, the Roff book (when published) may have been a better solution for my particular needs.

Before reading this book I only knew the very basics of ASP. I found the O'Reilly mix of info and examples just right and would recommend this book to people with a basic knowledge of the subject. Remember this book is not a tutorial and has nothing to do with snakes!

I picked up this book when I was exploring web scripting/server technologies for some of my personal web projects (read: fun). While this book is a good reference for ASP methods, it doesn't server as a very good introductory guide unless you're familiar with Microsoft's particular obfuscation of object-oriented programming.

Overall, the one good thing I got out of this book is that it's much more difficult to develop large-scale web applications (read: 10,000+ lines of code) with ASP than it should be (although this could be my C/C++/Java bias showing through).

For now, I'll be sticking with PHP, perl, Java, and C/C++ for my web programming. If you need a quick guide to ASP, look for another book on ASP, or, better yet, pick up a book on PHP or perl. PHP is an especially nice choice because of its easy database integration and extraordinary performance (with Zend, it's several times faster than ASP).

However, if you're already stuck using ASP for work or on your current projects, this book may be a good reference to have on hand.

I would not suggest this book for a novice. It glosses over quite a bit of ASP. However, it does provide nice coverage of the primary objects used in ASP (i.e. Session, Application, Response, Request, etc.). I think the author of the book definitely knows his stuff, but a few more examples would not have hurt. The book reads relatively well. I read the first 7-8 chapters during a two hour flight. I did like the way the author outlines the collections, methods, and events involved with each object. Overall, the book was not bad, but do not buy this book if you are clueless (I suggest Wrox's beginner ASP 2.0).

I bought this book and tried to learn ASP. However, I found that the book is not suitable for beginners like me. It briefly talks about how to make a simple ASP and then dives into the object models. I am sure the anatomy of the object models is very complete and concise, however, I wish it could spend more chapters on how to create more practical ASP's and spend more time explaining the purpose and use of the objects.

I must admit, I am not a big fan of "in a nutshell" books, but after reading this, I have regained my confidence in books with depressing covers. This book features great lessons on how to program in ASP, and many examples to go along with it. If you are intrested in programming using Microsoft's ASP, then I would definetely recommend this book.

This book addresses an antique version of the ASP technology, which was long out of date even at the time of its release. It contributes nothing new, in material or organization of ideas.

This book is simply a non-starter. Go with the WROX books instead.

I learn to program in ASP using this book. You will find good information about related topics like http protocol and ADO (to access databases). I'm using this book everyday. But I found some errors in the ASP code in the book, and the book don't cover the ASP VbScript.

My Question is Creating Treeview in ASP by using Java Script. I Hope You Will Help me With Solution Soon. It Looks Like Windows Explorer. Thank You raghu

Though I use this book sometimes for reference i really must i did not need this book. I guess i am more advanced in ASP than i knew. This book is not a guide for beginners but for someone intermediate who wants to explore more of the features of ASP. There are many things i've learned from the book, which i didn't know was possible before. It's a very good reference book, but it is not a tutorial or anything like that, so if you are a beginner and need a guide to asp then do not buy this book. The only bad thing about it is that it should have covered more of using databases and sql with asp. I would recommend this book for someone who are intermediate asp-developers or someone in the middle between beginner and intermediate and want to take the next step.

This is an excellent reference book, not a tutorial. I use it nearly every day and it rarely fails me.

If I had one criticism it would be that the ADO and FileSystemObject objects could be covered in a little more detail. I'd like to see return values of the functions, and listings of the numeric values of the various constants (e.g adCmdTable = 2).

Also, both this book & Developing ASP Components promise "Mastering ActiveX Data Objects" from O'Reilly. Where is it!

Keep in mind that this, and all "....in a Nutshell" books are designed to be reference material, not how to books. From that standpoint, this is an excellant desk reference for any ASP developer. After using another book to ease into ASP, this one became my standby for day to day development. If you are looking for something to teach you ASP, look elsewhere and then buy this one when you're done.

It provides u a quick reference for ASP objects and components. Properties, methods and collections are explained cleary and simply. Useful examples tells u how to use them smartly.

Introduction to ASP let u take a quick review of both ASP and its history

Being O'Reilly has published a great line of publications, I was expecting "ASP In A Nutshell" to be a lot like "Webmaster In A Nutshell". It is not. In fact, the explanations are a little lengthy. Brief and to the point is what I expect out of a quick reference book. The usage ("example") code is nice and I do find it beneficial to put the code in context. Overall it's an intermediate level ASP reference guide.

After reading "ASP Unleashed" I still did not 'get it'. It was not until I read this book that all the pieces fell together. Clear explanations without a lot of unnecessary detail, examples for each API. A great programming book for programmers!

I learned ASP through this book and it was painful. But now that I know what I'm doing I use it all the time.

Gotta give it up for this introduction to ASP: Five stars! A sober, clever, and clear explanation of the ASP object model; very non-partisan. Excellent background material on the http protocol, specifically on how requests are made by the client and processed by the server (with printouts of the transactions themselves from the TCP/IP packets). Enabled me to feel like I was getting a "ground level" view of the process and to understand how ASP builds on these technical foundations. Excellent work; excellent research. (Footnote: I also appreciated the "enlightened" use of she/he throughout the examples -- very pleasant; no disconnects.)

Before I read this book I thought the ASP technology could be good for little web applications only. Now I use ASP as basic technology to build all my applications. Finally I discovered an important reality: ASP is not only VBScript!

I picked up this book as my first ASP book ever! Since I have picked up many and just recently this book has become remotely helpful. As a newbie I was very intimidated and confused with this book. And almost gave up on ASP since no fundamentals were discussed. Now since I have a better grasp on the technology I can understand a little better but I still find the structure and long winded explanations to be confusing.

This book is a reference. All it does it quickly mention all classes, objects and properties and explain what they do. This way some fundamental explanation is left out (while some trivial information has been copy-pasted dozens of times). As I am a professional VB and VBA programmer, I figured ASP wouldn't be too hard with a reference manual. Yet I failed to get "the big picture" with this book. I reckon it'll be a good reference for those that already have another ASP book...

I'm a bit disappointed by this book. To use it as a reference, it is too incomplete, some methods just aren't explained. A reference of VBScript is also missing and overall there is little information to get the big picture of how asp works. So as a beginner you will miss basic informations about ASP, as advanced programmer you will get angry when you find out that exactly the function you want to look up isn't there.

I was able to get a construct for the language in a very short amount of time. I like the way the book is setup, according to ASP's object framework. However, I'm sorely disappointed in the lack of a language reference appendix, similar to O'reilly's JavaScript book (or even UNIX in a Nutshell, for that matter). For example I was looking for the syntax in evaluating two strings. That's right, no entry for "evaluating", "if", or relevant information on "variables." I now need to look into buying a second ASP book that covers some of the basic programming concepts associated with ASP.

While Weissinger claims that the purpose of this book is primarily reference, I read through it with absolutely no knowledge of VBScript or ASP, and am now incorporating it regularly into my web development projects. A must read for anone seeking to learn ASP or improve their understanding of it.

Exactly what it claims to be. Use it constantly for ASP development