Introducing ASP.NET
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If you ever thought about using ASP.NET, or wondered why you should, this article is for you. It will show you how ASP.NET fits in with other Internet technologies, and explain the advantages that ASP.NET offers over alternative technologies. It is excerpted from chapter three of
ASP.NET Web Development with Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, written by Costas Hadjisotiriou et al. (Apress, 2004; ISBN: 1590593480)
IN THIS CHAPTER, you will look beyond the three-letter acronyms that form ASP.NET to discover its origins and how it fits in the Internet technologies picture. We will show you the advantages that ASP.NET offers over alternative technologies. We will also compare it to its predecessor, classic ASP. This will ready you for Chapter 4, where we will delve deeper into the technical aspects of ASP.NET and provide you with a basic migration guide from classic ASP.
If you are familiar with ASP.NET and feel ready to get started creating sites in ASP.NET utilizing Dreamweaver’s facilities, you can safely skip this chapter, although you may find some of the information presented here useful.
The .NET Framework To understand why ASP.NET exists at all, you first need to examine the concept of the .NET Framework. The purpose of .NET is quite simple: to create a common framework in which all managed applications will run. For those of you who have worked with Java, this may sound very familiar. In fact, .NET seems to have been inspired by the Java success, but instead of trying to be a common language for different systems, .NET is focused on bringing different programming languages together to operate uniformly on Windows.
As a result, the obvious disadvantage is that .NET applications can only run on Windows systems, whether they act as servers or clients. For web developers interested in ASP.NET, this is probably a nonissue because all the .NET activity is on the server and only HTML reaches the client. The advantages of .NET over its nearest equivalent, Java, include the following:
- Because Java is multiplatform, its scope is limited to the lowest-common denominator of available computers and operating systems. In contrast, .NET programs can take full advantage of any feature of Windows.
- Because Java is the lowest-common denominator, developers often use proprietary classes to access features available to the target platform. This leads to nonportable code that has to be customized for the target platform anyway.
- Because Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) forces round-trips to the database, the .NET application architecture is faster. ADO.NET disconnected data access allows more data functions to be completed in memory.
In this chapter, we explain the basics of how .NET works so that ASP.NET makes sense. Figure 3-1 shows a schematic of the logical layers of the .NET Framework and where ASP.NET fits into it.
Figure 3-1. The .NET Framework's logical layers
Regardless of which language you use to write your application, it is translated into intermediate code, which is this code that will be executed in real time by the Common Language Runtime (CLR). This intermediate code is generated by the .NET compilers, and it is called Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL). It is a CPU-independent set of instructions that can be efficiently converted to CPU-specific code by a just-in-time (JIT) compiler. Because the CLR supplies one or more JIT compilers for each computer architecture it supports, the same set of MSIL can be compiled and run on any supported architecture.
TIP As you can see from Figure 3-1, ASP.NET is simply another component operating on top of the same architecture as any Windows Forms .NET program. The implication is that any code that handles business logic or other background programming can be easily reused for both desktop and web applications.
Because of the independence provided by the CLR, developers do not have to worry about missing any features or functionality arising from your language choice.
Another important way .NET affects web developers is it contains features that prevent bad coding practices that create nonreusable components. .NET encourages separation of the logical parts that compose a web page: interface design, business rules, data manipulation functions, custom objects, and so on. More on this in the “Active Server Pages .NET” section of this chapter and of course in subsequent chapters.
Installing the .NET Framework To install the .NET classes necessary for ASP.NET development, you need to download the Microsoft .NET Framework version 1.1 redistributable from http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?
url=/downloads/list/netdevframework.asp. It’s a 24MB download, but it contains everything you need for ASP.NET web pages or Windows Forms programming. You can also download the .NET software development kit (110MB) from the same page, but it’s not essential unless you want to develop XML web services. The redistributable package is available as a stand-alone executable file, Dotnetfx.exe, which you simply double-click after downloading. You need to have administrator privileges to install it.
You can install Dotnetfx.exe on any machine that runs Windows 98 or later; however, ASP.NET is supported only on the following platforms:
- Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional (Service Pack 3 recommended)
- Microsoft Windows 2000 Server (Service Pack 3 recommended)
- Microsoft Windows XP Professional
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003 family
The platforms just listed are the only ones capable of hosting and testing ASP.NET applications. However, you can develop these ASP.NET applications on any computer running Dreamweaver, including the Macintosh.
You also need to have
- Microsoft Data Access Components 2.6; Microsoft Data Access Components 2.7 Service Pack 1 is recommended. This is for applications that use data access.
- Internet Information Services (IIS) version 5.0 or later. To access the features of ASP.NET, IIS with the latest security updates must be installed prior to installing the .NET Framework.
After installation and restarting, you don’t need to do anything else. ASP.NET is installed as part of your IIS web server.
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 This article is excerpted from chapter three of the book ASP.NET Web Development with Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, written by Costas Hadjisotiriou et al. (Apress, 2004; ISBN: 1590593480). Check it out at your favorite bookstore. Buy this book now.
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