Introducing ASP.NET

By Aurelie A. Peralta

In this lesson, we will be reviewing the history of ASP, learn what is .NET technology, and differentiate ASP from ASP.NET.

Before discussing our main topics, let me first give you a short background on some Internet standards, especially the Web Client/Server fundamentals.

In general, communication in a web-based environment occurs between to entities, the server, and the client. A web client usually is an application that request resources or files from a server and the server is an application that handles and process the client’s request. A server therefore is something that gives or serves something. A web server is a server that is capable of handling web or HTTP requests, like in the case of Microsoft, the web server is a part of its IIS (Internet Information Services). These servers communicate using a protocol like the TCP/IP which defines the rules and procedures of how the communication will be done. HTTP is request-response type protocol that specifies that a client open a connection to the web server and then sends its request following a specific format. The server will then respond and closes the connection after. HTTP has the ability to transfer webpages, graphics and any other type of media that is used by a web application. The simplest HTTP message is GET and clients can also send POST requests, which mostly comes from html forms.

The Evolution of ASP

Microsoft’s ASP (Active Server Pages) was a relatively new technology introduced in 1996. Before ASP, developers uses CGI (Common Gateway Interface) and ISAPI (Internet Server Application Programming Interface). These two technologies played a vital role in the evolution of ASP.

Since 1996, there have been several versions of ASP (ASP 2.0 & ASP 3.0). It has evolve to become one of the foremost dynamic web site product, this is probably due to the ease with which complex pages and applications can be created combined with ability to use custom components and existing Microsoft and third party commercial components through the Component Object Model (COM/COM+) architecture. While ASP is simple and powerful to use, it also has the following disadvantages:

1. Codes can get complicated to quickly because ASP is unstructured.

2. In everything you do in ASP, you have to write codes.

3. Code is mixed with the design or presentation.

4. ASP combined with IIS is not always the best platform.

5. Deploying an application created in ASP that utilizes COM is not easy.

The Benefits of ASP.NET

With the shortcomings of ASP, ASP.NET was developed. ASP.NET is a set of components that provide developers with a framework with which to implement complex functionality. Scalability and availability are the two major improvements of ASP.NET over ASP. ASP.NET is scalable because it provides state services that can be utilized to manage session variables across multiple web servers in a server farm. It also possesses a high performance process model that can detect application failures and recover from them.

Some other major benefits of ASP.NET are:

1. Simplified development

2. Language independence

3. Simplified deployment.

4. Cross-client capability

5. Web Services

6. Performance

Review the following:

What is .NET? 

1. .NET Experiences

2. .NET Clients

3. .NET Services

4. .NET Servers

5. .NET Tools