Web Applications Technology Map

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The Web Applications Technology Map is your guide to getting started with the new Microsoft® .NET technologies for Web application development. Microsoft® ASP.NET (part of the .NET Framework SDK) and Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET provide exciting new paradigms for building secure, reliable, high-performance Web applications and XML Web services. The information below will help you get started.

For a list of all our new .NET content, please visit the .NET Six-Week Series Guide.

Contents

Getting Started
ASP.NET
ASP to ASP.NET Migration
Web Forms
Security
State Management
Data Access
Performance
XML Web Services and ASP.NET

Getting Started

.NET Framework SDK Download

The .NET Framework SDK includes everything you need to get started developing ASP.NET applications, including the .NET Framework itself (the common language runtime and class libraries forming the infrastructure for the overall .NET Platform), the SDK documentation, lots of sample code, and the utilities and tools you’ll need for developing, compiling, and debugging your applications.

.NET Framework SDK Documentation

If you want to check out the .NET Framework documentation before you download the full .NET Framework SDK, then go to the .NET Framework SDK Home Page in the MSDN Library online. Note that you can also find additional reference materials for developing with the .NET Framework SDK in the MSDN .NET Framework SDK Developer Center.

.NET Framework Home

The .NET Framework Home will help you stay up-to-date with the latest product information, technical resources, and tools, plus news and announcements regarding the .NET Framework.

WWW.ASP.NET

This key portal provides a strong focus on ASP.NET tutorials, sample code and controls, as well as providing discussion forums, up-coming conference information, and links to local ASP.NET user groups. This portal itself is developed using ASP.NET.

ASP.NET

As the next version of Active Server Pages (ASP), ASP.NET provides dramatic improvements and new features to enhance developer productivity, application performance, reliability, and deployment. ASP.NET makes full use of the .NET Framework, providing all the advantages of using the .NET Framework’s common language runtime, type safety, inheritance, and other modern programming language features using any .NET-compatible language, including Visual Basic® .NET, C#, and JScript® .NET.

To learn more about what ASP.NET has to offer Web applications, see Why ASP.NET and Introduction to ASP.NET in the .NET Framework Developer’s Guide.

ASP to ASP.NET Migration

Higher performance and more robust applications are two key advantages to moving your ASP applications to ASP.NET. A solid understanding of the technologies that have changed or been introduced with the .NET platform and ASP.NET will go a long way in making this process much easier.

For more information about converting ASP to ASP.NET, see Converting ASP to ASP.NET.

Web Forms

Web Forms pages offer you a powerful and straightforward programming model that uses familiar rapid application development (RAD) techniques to build sophisticated Web-enabled user interfaces. Through the use of Web Forms (and a Web Forms extension called the Mobile Internet Toolkit), it is possible to write Web-based applications that can automatically target multiple browsers and multiple device types.

For more information on ASP.NET Web Forms, see:

Security

Securing Web sites is a critical, complex issue for Web developers. A secure system requires careful planning, and Web site administrators and programmers must have a clear understanding of the options for securing their site. ASP.NET works in concert with the Microsoft .NET Framework and IIS to provide Web application security. ASP.NET provides built-in functionality to make it easy to perform authentication, authorization, and impersonation, where required.

For more information about securing Web sites using .NET, see:

State Management

Application state includes any piece of information or data that affects the behavior of the application: catalogs, shopping carts, user options, lists of reviews, and hit counters are all examples. State management can be complex because a wide variety of usage patterns, data types, and access methods are available to application developers building state-based solutions. ASP.NET provides easy-to-use application-state and session-state management facilities that are familiar to ASP developers and readily compatible with all other .NET Framework APIs.

ASP.NET session state management is also scalable to Web farm configurations. Session state may be stored within the ASP.NET process, in a separate process (which can run on a different server), or in a SQL Server database.

For more information about managing application state using .NET, see ASP.NET State Management in the .NET Framework Developer's Guide.

Data Access

ASP.NET includes data access components that make it easier than ever for you to design sites that allow your users to interact with databases through Web pages. The .NET Framework includes two data providers for accessing enterprise databases, the OLE DB .NET data provider and the SQL Server .NET data provider. The .NET Framework also includes three controls that make the display of large amounts of data easier: the Repeater control, the DataList control, and the DataGrid control. These three controls all use similar data-binding procedures, as explained in the sections that follow.

For more information about data access using ASP.NET, see:

Performance

ASP.NET provides a number of built-in performance enhancements that are not included in earlier versions of ASP. For example, instead of interpreting page code as is done in ASP, ASP.NET pages are dynamically compiled the first time they are requested using the common language runtime (CLR) just-in-time (JIT) compilation feature that converts ASP.NET managed page code into the native code of the processing server at run time.

For more information about performance for ASP.NET see ASP.NET Performance Overview in the .NET Framework Developer's Guide in the .NET Framework Developer’s Guide.

XML Web Services and ASP.NET

Since XML Web services created using ASP.NET are built on top of the .NET Framework, they can take full advantage of all the advanced technologies and features in ASP.NET. This allows you to focus more of your time on the design and implementation of your service itself. And, since ASP.NET adheres to the various Internet standards underpinning XML Web services, you can be sure that your XML Web services created with ASP.NET will interoperate with XML Web services created using the other programming tools, languages, and platforms that also conform to these important Internet standards.

For more information about XML Web Services with ASP.NET, see XML Web Services Created Using ASP.NET and XML Web Service Clients in the .NET Framework Developer's Guide.