About the Technology: ASP.NET is a leading-edge tool in Web development. According to a recent survey performed by Microsoft, there are 2.1 million professional Web developers and 1.8 million hobbyist Web developers (Developer Sizing, 9/01). According to the latest Dev Tracker report, 54% of Web developers use ASP, and 19% of Web developers use ASP.NET (Dev Tracker Q4, 2002). The ASP/ASP.NET community is therefore an estimated 2.8 million Web developers. The next version of ASP.NET, ASP.NET 2.0, is planned as part of the Whidbey release of Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, which is currently slated for fall or winter of 2004. In the meantime, the ASP.NET team will be making the beta widely available--the Tech Preview is slated to be released at PDC, which is scheduled for the last week of October in Los Angeles, CA. This book will have a natural life of approximately one year--from the release of the Tech Preview through to the release of the final product.
Dino Esposito is one of the world’s authorities on web technology and software architecture. Over years, Dino developed hands-on experience and skills in architecting and building distributed systems for banking and insurance companies and, in general, in industry contexts where the demand for security, optimization, performance, scalability, interoperability is dramatically high. Dino is also a prolific author, Every month, at least five different magazines and Web sites throughout the world publish Dino's articles covering topics ranging from Web development to AJAX architectures and from data access to Silverlight and design patterns. Dino published an array of books, most of which are considered state-of-the-art in their respective areas. His recent books are Programming ASP.NET 3.5—Core Reference, Introducing Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX, and Programming Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Applications—Advanced Topics. Dino speaks regularly at industry conferences all over the world, including Microsoft TechEd, DevConnections, and premiere European conferences such as DevWeek and Basta.