ASP.

NET Introduction

ASP.NET is the latest version of Microsoft's Active Server Pages technology

(ASP).

What is ASP?

ASP is a server side scripting technology that enables scripts (embedded in web pages) to be executed by an
Internet server.

 ASP is a Microsoft Technology

 ASP stands for Active Server Pages
 ASP is a program that runs inside IIS
 IIS stands for Internet Information Services
 IIS comes as a free component with Windows 2000
 IIS is also a part of the Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack
 The Option Pack can be downloaded from Microsoft
 PWS is a smaller - but fully functional - version of IIS
 PWS can be found on your Windows 95/98 CD

What is an ASP File?

 An ASP file is just the same as an HTML file

 An ASP file can contain text, HTML, XML, and scripts
 Scripts in an ASP file are executed on the server
 An ASP file has the file extension ".asp"

How Does it Work?

 When a browser requests an HTML file, the server returns the file
 When a browser requests an ASP file, IIS passes the request to the ASP engine
on the server
 The ASP engine reads the file, line by line, and executes the scripts in the file
 Finally, the ASP file is returned to the browser as plain HTML

Before you study ASP .NET, it would help to have a basic understanding of Microsoft's ASP
technology.

What is ASP+?

ASP+ is the same as ASP.NET.

ASP+ is just an early name used by Microsoft when they developed ASP.NET.

What is ASP.NET?

 ASP 3.0 is the latest version of ASP, but there will never be an ASP 4.0 version.
 ASP.NET is the next generation ASP, but it's not an upgraded version of ASP. ASP.NET is
an entirely new paradigm for server-side ASP scripting.

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  ASP.NET is a part of the .NET Framework. Microsoft spent three years rewriting ASP.NET
from the ground up, and ASP.NET is not fully backward compatible with ASP 3.0.
 You can read more about the differences between ASP and ASP.NET in the next chapter of
this tutorial.

.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.
 The .NET Framework contains a common language runtime and common class libraries -
like ADO.NET, ASP.NET and Windows Forms - to provide advanced standard services that
can be integrated into a variety of computer systems.
 The .NET Framework provides a feature-rich application environment, simplified
development and easy integration between a number of different development languages.
 The .NET Framework is language neutral. Currently it supports C++, C#, Visual Basic, and
JScript (Microsoft's version of JavaScript).
 Microsoft's Visual Studio.NET is a common development environment for the .NET
Framework.

Differences between ASP and ASP .NET

ASP .NET has better language support, a large set of new controls and 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 the new ADO .NET.

ASP .NET supports full Visual Basic, not VBScript.
ASP .NET supports C# (C sharp) and C++.
ASP .NET supports JScript as before.

ASP .NET Controls

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  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 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 forms-based user authentication, including cookie management and automatic
redirecting of unauthorized logins.

(You can still do your custom login page and custom user checking).

User Accounts and Roles

ASP .NET allows for 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.

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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.

ASP.NET - Server Controls

Server controls are tags that are understood by the server.

The Page_Load Event

The Page_Load event is one of many events that ASP.NET understands. The Page_Load event is
triggered when a page loads, and ASP.NET will automatically call the subroutine Page_Load, and
execute the code inside it:
private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
lbl1.Text="The date and time is " + DateTime.Now;
}
The Page.IsPostBack Property
The Page_Load subroutine runs EVERY time the page is loaded. If you want to execute the code
in the Page_Load subroutine only the FIRST time the page is loaded, you can use the
Page.IsPostBack property. If the Page.IsPostBack property is false, the page is loaded for the first
time, if it is true, the page is posted back to the server (i.e. from a button click on a form):
if(!Page.IsPostBack)
{
lbl1.Text="The date and time is " + DateTime.Now;

The example above will write the "The date and time is...." message only the first time the page is loaded.
When a user clicks on the Submit button, the submit subroutine will write "Hello World!" to the second
label, but the date and time in the first label will not change.
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