Rating: 

I generally agree with the book description. Each article is pretty concise and the book is a fast read. Even skimming the table of contents to find one or two tools to use is very easy.

The book starts with a forward, then credits, then a preface before 23 chapters, an appendix and an index. There were 60 contributors including the author according to the credits. The preface states there are 170 tools in this edition. There were no errors that I found. There was no errata submitted to the website on 8 April 2007.

The book is balanced and starts with chapters about ASP and Forms. They are both extremely well written and have very useful tools.

This book is light reading. I read it in a month, just a couple of hours a day. The style is light and easy to enjoy. The flow of the style makes it hard to believe that so many authors are involved in the writing. It seems like one person wrote it. I really liked each subsection being 10 pages or less. It was much easier to consume each tool without having to read 20 or 30 pages about it. I think that readers will find a more successful experience when they only have to read 10 pages or less, download the tool, and play with it before putting it into practice.

I thought [and hoped] there would be more tools in:

Chapter 17 Tightening up your security. 5 tools might mean there is not enough information on security tools out there or programmers are keeping the best security tools secret and well... secure.

17.6 For more information refers to design patterns and other issues not directly affecting security specifically, but simplifying code in general will help security.

I liked the following chapters quite a bit:

Chapter 15 Troubleshooting and Debugging

Chapter 20 Interacting with Databases

Chapter 21 Exploring Object/Relational Mapping

The best chapters were hard to determine, all the chapters were excellent. Here are two that I thought were best:

Chapter 22 Enhancing Web Develpment

Chapter 23 Boosting Productivity with Windows Utilities

Chapter 23 was the very best in the book, in my opinion.

This book is worth 5 stars and every penny charged for it, taking everything into account. This book will pay for itself over and over.

I also liked the sources of the tools: many of the people in the credits are heavy hitters with lots of quality talent and time in writing software. I know Brian Button but did not know he had a contribution until one of our user groups mentioned it at a meeting. Good job Brian.

Well done.

Definitive

Frederick J Eccher Jr
MBA
M.S. Management of Information Systems
A.B. Psychology
B.A. Biology
CIO, Community Partners
President, Board of Directors, Saint Louis Visual Basic Users Group
rick@stlvbug.net