A Sample Chapter from
Professional ASP.NET
Book Title: Professional ASP.NET Published by: Wrox Publication Chapter Number:   1 Chapter Title: A Fast-Track Guide to ASP.NET Author: Wrox Author Team Price $: 59.99 ISBN: 1861004885 Buy It Now: Click here Additional Info: Wrox Publication Copyright ©: Wrox Publication	ASP.NET

Microsoft's .NET technology has attracted a great deal of press since Beta 1 was first released to the world. Since then, mailing lists, newsgroups, and web sites have sprung up containing a mixture of code samples, applications, and articles of various forms. Even if you're not a programmer using existing ASP technology, it's a good bet that you've at least heard of .NET, even if you aren't quite sure what it involves. After all, there's so much information about .NET, that it's sometimes hard to filter out what you need from what's available. With new languages, new designers, and new ways of programming, you might wonder exactly what you need to write ASP.NET applications.

That's where this chapter comes in, because we are going to explain exactly what is required, and how we go about using it. The aim is to get you up and running, able to write simple ASP.NET pages as quickly as possible, and give you a solid grounding in the basics of the new framework. This will not only benefit existing ASP programmers, but also people who haven't used ASP, including Visual Basic programmers who need to write Web applications. ASP.NET makes the whole job much easier whatever your skill set.

• Installing and testing ASP.NET
  
• The benefits of the new technology
  
• The basic differences between ASP and ASP.NET
  
• The new programming model
  
• The rich hierarchy of server controls

Think of this chapter as a précis for the rest of the book. We start with the simple discussion of why ASP.NET has come about.

  ASP.NET is where the revolution begins, because it is radically different from previous versions. Its first appearance into the world was at the Wrox Conference in Washington D.C, back in 1999, where impromptu applause showed how much the audience liked the product. Then in July 2000, ASP.NET received its first public release at PDC, where around 6,000 developers were bombarded with nothing but .NET. As a consequence, they spent most of the week looking like rabbits in headlights – rather dazed and confused with all they had to take in. .NET isn't particularly difficult to understand, but ASP.NET is very different from what we are used to.

  That's really the whole crux of the matter. ASP.NET is just a part of the whole .NET framework, but to use ASP.NET effectively you have to understand the underlying architecture. In the next chapter we'll outline this new architecture and the benefits it brings, but for now we need to look at ASP.NET.

ASP.NET is available in two flavors:

• Standard redistributable. This is the version that is supplied with the .NET Framework SDK.
  
• Premium Version containing additional features.

The Premium Version, contains the following:

• Output Caching
  
• Web Farm Session State
  
• Code Access Hosting (sandboxed security for ASP.NET)
  
• Support for 4 CPUs and above

  ASP.NET is supported on Windows 2000 (Professional and Server versions) and Windows XP. It is not supported for Windows NT or the Widows 9x platforms. You can install Visual Studio.NET on these platforms and remotely use ASP.NET on the supported platforms. ASP.NET can be obtained from Microsoft, at http://www.Microsoft.com/net, http://www.asp.net/ or http://www.gotdotnet.com/, and is also part of the MSDN Subscription service.

  This indicates the MDAC is not installed on your system. You can press the Ignore button to continue with the setup process – MDAC isn't required for .NET, although it is recommended if you use any of the data features that interoperate with ADO.

  Once the Installation Wizard starts you'll have the usual license screen followed by the options screen:

  This gives you the option of installing the required components, tools and samples, as well as the SDK samples. You should leave all options ticked to ensure that everything is installed. The distributable version of the .NET framework is around 18Mb, and doesn't contain samples or documentation.

  As part of the samples, a named instance of the Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE) is installed containing sample databases.

  At this point the samples are installed, and you have the option to Launch them. You can also launch the samples by navigating to the Microsoft .NET Framework SDK menu (installed under the Programs) and selecting Samples and QuickStart Tutorials.