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Active Server Pages.NET - What is it and why do we need it?
ASP.NET is the full scale revision to the ASP technology based on the new .NET framework. It is not Active Server Pages Part 4. It is much different than current ASP. ASP.NET offers several advantages over all the other Internet technologies including ASP itself. It is faster to deploy, requires far less coding, and offers cross network/platform opportunities that have never existed. Making it clearer
Until this point in time in Internet Development we have compared technologies that all generate the same amount of code. Whether we are debating traditional ASP, Perl, JSP, Cold Fusion whatever... they all produce the same amount of code to do the same things. The debate has always been which technology is easier to learn, offers the most functionality, and runs the fastest. ASP.NET IS NOT a technology you can compare to any development technology that has been released to date. That includes traditional ASP. ASP.NET requires 10 times less coding than traditional technologies. Take a look at this table generated with an ASP.NET DataGrid. - A .NET DataGrid. It takes 26 lines of code to produce this grid. If the table expands to 200 columns it takes 26 lines of code. If it grows to 10,000 rows it takes 26 lines of code. The code never has to be edited for speed nor formatting. 26 lines of code that never need to be touched unless we want to change design styles.
Faster Development
As efficient and powerful as current ASP is, it also offers many obstacles. Current ASP makes the programmer work too hard to accomplish simple goals. Form validation is a perfect example. The amount of time spent writing code to make sure users have entered values in to forms and legitimate values at that is a very time consuming redundant task. What if the server did it all for you? Now it does. ASP.NET allows direct access to page objects such as form elements at runtime. Validating data entry is simple. You specify the rules and ASP.NET does the babysitting. This new technique of runtime access has eliminated coding practices that would often take hours. Web Services Sharing data across platforms and applications. A web service is a way of distributing the access and functionality of one main service to several other users/systems. Think of it as a global function available to anyone you choose to make it available to. Lets say you offer products from your web store but you also want to make those products available to other 3rd party web stores. Every time you update your store they will need to update their store. But what if they just pulled your product information transparently from your site? Bingo. Updates on the fly. Web Services are a new way of transparently and efficiently tying things together across wide geographical areas in to one system. It is heavily anticipated that web services will offer new lucrative financial opportunities. .NET Web Services - .NET overview including web services from Microsoft. UPS Shipping Rates with a .Net Web Service - written by Dan Anderson who is truly an ASP genius.
Cross Platform - The smell of XML
ASP.NET data transmission is done in XML. Any platform or component on the web that can read XML can easily be integrated with the services of ASP.NET. It does not have to be Microsoft specific either. No more evident than with ADO.NET which is the revision to ADO and the way ASP.NET databases are driven. XML allows for data transmission across all tiers and across platforms without cross platform headaches. XML Formatting The transmission of data in XML allows data formatting to happen on the fly. Hands off! XML will do it all for you. In present day ASP and other technologies, we need to build the columns and rows (i.e. tables) to present our data and we also have to write speed enhancements in to our applications. This usually means periodic adjustments as the database gets bigger. Not anymore. Take a look at this DataGrid again A .NET DataGrid Merging Technologies One of the biggest challenges of the Internet in its present state is tying different technologies together that are on different platforms. With all the palm pilots, cell phones, beepers, and other devices that can now interact with the Internet, a change was needed. The .NET framework allows different technologies to be tied together with ease.
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