The Web is an exciting place with plenty of activity and new technology. Microsoft has made available a number of tools designed to help new and existing developers deliver exciting web applications.

This book addresses Microsoft's web technology for applications using a fictitious video library. This starts with a general introduction to databases, HTML, VBScript and Active Server scripts. Following the basic groundwork for a web site ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), Microsoft's latest database technology is introduced as a means of accessing a server database. Finally the Advanced Data Connector (ADC) is introduced for client database access.

A lot of ground is covered within the twenty-one chapters and inevitably compromises have been made between what is in and what is left out, such as addressing the issue of portability between Internet Explorer clients and Netscape, or examining HTML cascading style sheets.

The material covered is well presented, has plenty of explanations and serves as a useful introduction to those with no experience of web programming or who have not used ADO or ADC. The code that is developed is on the accompanying CD along with an assortment of 3rd party tools and so is available for experimentation. Unfortunately ADO and ADC are not provided on the CD.

The book is clearly focused on web programming with Microsoft tools and for some people that will be enough to prompt a purchase. Others, interested in also delivering functionality to Netscape and other web clients, will need to look elsewhere.