What books should I recommend to my client to learn about web applications?

Question

We recently built a large ASP.NET web forms application for a client and the main point of contact has told me he wants to learn more about the technical side of web applications. He has no programming experience and has a primarily business background.

I have provided him with many online resources, however he would like to get some book recommendations. After searching myself, I can't seem to find any that fit the bill.

I am looking for a book that will:

• Provide a high-level introduction to internet tecnologies (HTTP, TCP/IP, servers, web farms, hosting, scripting languages etc).
• Cover issues that commonly affect the success/failure of web applications (performance & scalability, security, data integrity, server maintainence).
• Give a very basic introduction to web development (ideally in the ASP.NET world, but not important).
• Introduce typical web application architectures (for example describing N-Tier systems, SOA)

I can obviously find tons of books on each of the topics mentioned above, however I can't seem to find any that would be targeted at people that are not (would-be) web developers.

Anyone have any recommendations?

Answer 1

How about this one? Learning Web Design: A Beginner's Guide to (X)HTML, StyleSheets, and Web Graphics by O'Reilly?

It covers most of your topics, but unfortunately doesn't really cover the programming aspect - just the scripting. A good start nonetheless.

Then, if he's still up for it, you can hit him with Beginning Web Development, Silverlight, and ASP.NET AJAX: From Novice to Professional by Apress, which would finish the job and introduce them to MS technologies. "It adopts a “zero to hero” approach..." which is what you are looking for.

Answer 2

You might get better responses on ServerFault since you're asking about a book that mainly centers on server administration rather than the programming aspect.