Book Review: ASP.NET 3.5 Application Architecture and Design

This review is part of a series of book reviews I have agreed to do for Packt Publishing. I am not being paid for this review, although I did receive a free copy of the book. I do not work for either Packt Publishing or Microsoft.

ASP.NET 3.5 Application Architecture and Design was written by Vivek Thakur and published in 2008.

Who This Book is For

This book is intended for developers who have “basic understanding of the ASP.NET framework, and programming knowledge of either C# or VB.NET”, although it looks to me as if every example is written with C#. The word basic is a relative term, but Vivek seems to use it accurately – you don’t need to know that much about ASP.NET in order to comprehend this book.

Furthermore, Vivek states that “if reading about application architecture usually confuses you or sends you to sleep, then this book will be perfect for you!” He’s not lying. Vivek does an outstanding job explaining complicated concepts using everyday analogies.

Getting Started

Vivek starts the book by introducing the reader to the world of software architecture. He uses the analogy of an automobile company, where mechanical engineers, design engineers and the assembly line staff all have clearly defined roles – roles separated from each other for a variety of reasons. Vivek equates this process to that of the software “project life cycle”, and then moves into a discussion on software tiers and layers.

From there Vivek dives into n-Tier software architecture, giving some great examples along the way. I loved his approach to this topic because he starts at the beginning (a 1 Tier, 1 Layer application) and moves step-by-step towards a fully n-Tier application (his example uses 6 Tiers). The author also sticks to the same example (an order management system, or OMS) which helps the reader easily understand how a 1 Tier application is different from a 4 Tier.

I also really appreciated Vivek’s instruction on how to add new class libraries to Visual Studio. For readers who aren’t well versed in VS, this is definitely something useful.

Lastly, I thought it was a great idea to introduce the concepts of Data Transfer Objects (DTOs), Lazy Loading and distributing assemblies across multiple machines. Vivek’s explanations of each subject were clear and concise – perfect for readers with only “basic understanding of the ASP.NET framework.”

Moving On

About halfway into the book, the author moves into discussions of MVC and SOA design patterns. The only thing I really didn’t like was the introduction of the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) in chapter 7, and that’s because Vivek only spent 4 pages on the subject. WCF is also the only .NET-specific topic in the entire book; I understand why it was introduced, but it felt rushed and (as someone who isn’t an expert ASP.NET developer) I didn’t get much out of it.

On the other hand, I really enjoyed Chapter 8 (Database Design). Vivek’s conceptualization of the domain model vs. the logical data model is spot-on, and I would recommend that any developer looking to build a database read it. I particularly liked the author’s example on page 197 for data normalization: who knew that the members of Metallica wrote books on ASP.NET? Sweet!

The Final Verdict

I definitely enjoyed reading ASP.NET 3.5 Application Architecture and Design. Overall, I think I would say that anyone interested in software architecture and design (regardless of the language used in development) could get a lot out of this book, minus a handful of exceptions (see my comment on WCF above).

Nice job Vivek!