For the developer wanting to create their own ASP components, this book provides an excellent starting point and technical reference resource. It's accurate, readable and well organised. Looking at the errata lists on the O'Reilly web site exposes the high level of accuracy and attention to detail that have gone into this book. Almost all of the corrections are in the further reading sections that accompany each chapter and most are changed URLs (which is more a reflection of the problems associated with the web than the quality of this book).

The book is designed to appeal to experienced developers who are creating custom components and so assumes a reasonable knowledge of ATL and COM programming in your chosen environment. The book is divided into four sections. The first covers the theory, explaining ASP, the ASP development environment, ASP and COM, ASP and threads, etc. The remaining sections detail how to apply the knowledge gained from the first section in different environments; Visual Basic, Visual C++ and Visual J++. The practical sections include extensive codeexamples, all of which are available via the web, as are the errata and a sample chapter.

The book is peppered with hints and warnings, reflecting its very practical approach. While the author has not published an email address at which she can be contacted, the publishers do provide email support. It amused me to note that one of the most recent errata changed the contact address from nuts@oreilly.com to info@oreilly.com.

What more can be said, if you are serious about writing your own ASP components, take a look at this book.