Zachmann.NET
Don't Drop This Thing!
Omar Al Zabir is not just a coder, but a software architect, designer, developer and entrepreneur executing major projects.
The rapid evolution of standards, software techniques and Microsoft's tools poses a constant challenge to Web developers. No sooner are we familiar with one release of ASP.NET, Visual Studio or some new key technology than it's time to start learning the next iteration. We spend so much time keeping up on the latest innovations and tools, it's a wonder we have any time to program anymore.
It's no mean feat to gain the bigger picture view, either. There's so much in each technology that it's easy to get lost in the details and hard to see just how everything fits and works together. Language Integrated Query (LINQ), Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX), widgets, ASP.NET 2.0 and 3.5, Windows Presentation Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) are just a few of the Web 2.0 parts we need to understand in detail as part of the overall development pattern.
It's a challenge, too, to know how well each technology works -- or doesn't -- in the real world. Practical pitfalls abound. The obvious way to get the job done sometimes leads to scalability or security problems in deployment. The easy road may have major practical bumps on it. We need the benefit of practical experience to tell the difference.
A Serious Book
In the midst of struggling with these issues recently, I was delighted to find an incredibly useful resource, a book by Omar Al Zabir unassumingly titled, "Building a Web 2.0 Portal with ASP.NET 3.5" from O'Reilly Press (2008). A 24-year-old Microsoft MVP who began programming when he was 10, Al Zabir is one of the up-and-coming programming geniuses of the early 21st century. Co-founder and CTO of Pageflakes Ltd., a stunningly customizable personal portal site, he's an extremely accomplished developer with a wealth of practical experience.
Many books about programming are written by folks like me who are primarily writers. Sure, we're programmers, too, but that's not our day job. The same is true of many programming course instructors. They're good at what they do, they write fine books and teach excellent courses, but they learn to code to write or teach, not to do serious practical development.
Omar Al Zabir isn't one of those rainy-day programmers. He's not just a coder, but a software architect, designer, developer and entrepreneur executing major projects -- portals with millions of hits. "Building a Web 2.0 Portal with ASP.NET 3.5" distills his experience into a single volume of less than 300 pages -- unusually brief as computer programming books go. But I found that it's an indispensable resource for anyone serious about software development using Microsoft technologies and tools.
It's -- fundamentally -- a manual on how to build a high-performance, highly scalable, fully customizable personal Web portal site using the latest Microsoft technologies (except for Silverlight), but with a distinctly open source bent. The base architecture is a three-column container-page framework populated with user-customizable widgets built with ASP.NET AJAX, including user-defined extensions. It employs .NET Authorization and Authentication to manage site membership; LINQ for back -- end data integration with SQL databases and XML data sources; and WF to define the site's middle-tier business logic and behavior.
The book is densely packed with clear, practical advice on just about every issue relevant to making an industrial-strength Web site able to reliably and securely sustain high-traffic volumes. It's hard to convey how useful this little book is without hyperbole. But if you were to study just one book to learn how to develop a Web site, this is the one you must read.
In Praise of Dropthings
Best of all, the book is just the beginning. The site described in the book is not a literary exercise. It's a real site you can visit, join and use: Dropthings.com. Even better, it's an open source project on CodePlex (www.codeplex.com/dropthings) where you can obtain the entire source code and project files and, if you like, even contribute to its further development.
This is a very big deal. It means you not only can read about how to do it and get an enormous wealth of practical advice on implementation, but you can actually get and use the code for your own projects. Mind you, we're not talking about just little hobby projects here. This is real-world, heavy-duty code.
In teaching programming, a standard practice is to present the basics of the programming language, API or whatever and then work that into coding exercises. But in the real world, programmers learn as much by looking at code written by someone else and using it as a basis for their own projects.
Al Zabir, between the book and the CodePlex project, gives us all the opportunity to do this at a particularly high level. We can start with what amounts to a highly generalized, open source, extensible SharePoint-on-steroids project and take it from there. This is a rare opportunity. Seize it now, while you can!
About the Author
William F. Zachmann, born before the modern digital computer was invented, has lived with them (and made his living off of them) all his life. He was director of research for The Forum Corp. in the mid-'70s and senior vice president of corporate research at International Data Corp. (IDC) in the '80s. He has a copy of Windows 1.0 that Bill Gates signed for him the night it was rolled out at Comdex Fall '85. Zachmann is now director of Canopus Research Inc. He programs in C# using Visual Studio 2005 with a focus on ASP.NET and SQL Server 2005.