What is ASP.NET??

ASP.NET Introduction What You Should Already Know Before you continue you should have a basic understanding of the following: WWW, HTML, XML and the basics of building Web pages Scripting languages like JavaScript or VBScript The basics of server side scripting like ASP or PHP What is Classic ASP? Microsoft's previous server side scripting technology ASP (Active Server Pages) is now often called classic ASP. ASP 3.0 was the last version of classic ASP. ASP.NET is NOT ASP ASP.NET is the next generation ASP, but it's not an upgraded version of ASP. ASP.NET is an entirely new technology for server-side scripting. It was written from the ground up and is not backward compatible with classic ASP. You can read more about the differences between ASP and ASP.NET in the next chapter of this tutorial. ASP.NET is the major part of the Microsoft's .NET Framework. What is ASP.NET? ASP.NET is a server side scripting technology that enables scripts (embedded in web pages) to be executed by an Internet server. ASP.NET is a Microsoft Technology ASP stands for Active Server Pages ASP.NET is a program that runs inside IIS IIS (Internet Information Services) is Microsoft's Internet server IIS comes as a free component with Windows servers IIS is also a part of Windows 2000 and XP Professional What is an ASP.NET File? An ASP.NET file is just the same as an HTML file An ASP.NET file can contain HTML, XML, and scripts Scripts in an ASP.NET file are executed on the server An ASP.NET file has the file extension ".aspx" How Does ASP.NET Work? When a browser requests an HTML file, the server returns the file When a browser requests an ASP.NET file, IIS passes the request to the ASP.NET engine on the server The ASP.NET engine reads the file, line by line, and executes the scripts in the file Finally, the ASP.NET file is returned to the browser as plain HTML What is ASP+? ASP+ is the same as ASP.NET. ASP+ is just an early name used by Microsoft when they developed ASP.NET. The Microsoft .NET Framework The .NET Framework is the infrastructure for the Microsoft .NET platform. The .NET Framework is an environment for building, deploying, and running Web applications and Web Services. Microsoft's first server technology ASP (Active Server Pages), was a powerful and flexible "programming language". But it was too code oriented. It was not an application framework and not an enterprise development tool. The Microsoft .NET Framework was developed to solve this problem. .NET Frameworks keywords: Easier and quicker programming Reduced amount of code Declarative programming model Richer server control hierarchy with events Larger class library Better support for development tools The .NET Framework consists of 3 main parts: Programming languages: C# (Pronounced C sharp) Visual Basic (VB .NET) J# (Pronounced J sharp) Server technologies and client technologies: ASP .NET (Active Server Pages) Windows Forms (Windows desktop solutions) Compact Framework (PDA / Mobile solutions) Development environments: Visual Studio .NET (VS .NET) Visual Web Developer ASP.NET vs. ASP ASP.NET has better language support, a large set of new controls, XML-based components, and better user authentication. ASP.NET provides increased performance by running compiled code. ASP.NET code is not fully backward compatible with ASP. New in ASP.NET Better language support Programmable controls Event-driven programming XML-based components User authentication, with accounts and roles Higher scalability Increased performance - Compiled code Easier configuration and deployment Not fully ASP compatible Language Support ASP.NET uses ADO.NET. ASP.NET supports full Visual Basic, not VBScript. ASP.NET supports C# (C sharp) and C++. ASP.NET supports JScript. ASP.NET Controls ASP.NET contains a large set of HTML controls. Almost all HTML elements on a page can be defined as ASP.NET control objects that can be controlled by scripts. ASP.NET also contains a new set of object-oriented input controls, like programmable list-boxes and validation controls. A new data grid control supports sorting, data paging, and everything you can expect from a dataset control. Event Aware Controls All ASP.NET objects on a Web page can expose events that can be processed by ASP.NET code. Load, Click and Change events handled by code makes coding much simpler and much better organized. ASP.NET Components ASP.NET components are heavily based on XML. Like the new AD Rotator, that uses XML to store advertisement information and configuration. User Authentication ASP.NET supports form-based user authentication, cookie management, and automatic redirecting of unauthorized logins. User Accounts and Roles ASP.NET allows user accounts and roles, to give each user (with a given role) access to different server code and executables. High Scalability Much has been done with ASP.NET to provide greater scalability. Server-to-server communication has been greatly enhanced, making it possible to scale an application over several servers. One example of this is the ability to run XML parsers, XSL transformations and even resource hungry session objects on other servers. Compiled Code The first request for an ASP.NET page on the server will compile the ASP.NET code and keep a cached copy in memory. The result of this is greatly increased performance. Easy Configuration Configuration of ASP.NET is done with plain text files. Configuration files can be uploaded or changed while the application is running. No need to restart the server. No more metabase or registry puzzle. Easy Deployment No more server-restart to deploy or replace compiled code. ASP.NET simply redirects all new requests to the new code. Compatibility ASP.NET is not fully compatible with earlier versions of ASP, so most of the old ASP code will need some changes to run under ASP.NET. To overcome this problem, ASP.NET uses a new file extension ".aspx". This will make ASP.NET applications able to run side by side with standard ASP applications on the same server.