Author: Rick Kiessig
Publisher: Apress, 2009
Pages: 500
ISBN: 978-1430223832
Aimed at: Website developers in .NET environment
Rating: 5
Pros: Good explanations, good mix of practice and theory
Cons: Slow start
Reviewed by: Ian Elliot

The full title of this book is:  Ultra-fast ASP.NET: Building Ultra-Fast and Ultra-Scalable Websites Using ASP.NET and SQL Server - which is a bit of a mouthful. But don't let that put you off.

There are lots of books that deal with speeding up websites in general and this book does go over the very general and quite well known advice in its first few chapters. Many of the comments are aimed at ASP.NET in particular but by Chapter 4 we have specialized to optimising IIS and from then on the subject matter gets ever more specific to the ASP .NET environment and all the more valuable for that.

Not only does the book deal with optimising ASP .NET, IIS and SQL but it also succeeds in telling you how things work so that you can evaluate the advice against your own web site and circumstances. Another surprise is the coverage of SQL Analysis services which is very welcome despite perhaps being a little out of place.

The book is useful for web site administrators who simply want to know how to tweak the configuration to speed things up and it is useful if you are an ASP .NET programmer wanting to implement a good architecture. It also covers an up-to-date version of ASP .NET and provides principles that mean that it is unlikely to date too fast.

While there are other books on the subject and on optimising LAMP-based websites this one is the one to buy if you want to optimise an ASP .NET website or just get to grips with IIS and SQL in a client/server system. It's essential reading for all but the complete novice ASP.NET developer.