Getting Started with ASP.NET 3.5
By Scott Mitchell
ASP.NET is an exciting web programming technology pioneered by Microsoft that allows developers to create dynamic web pages. Dynamic web pages are pages whose content is dynamically regenerated each time the web page is requested. For example, after you log on, the front page of Amazon.com shows books it recommends for you, based on your previous purchases. This is a dynamic web page because it is a single web page whose content is customized based on what customer is visiting. In this book we examine how to create dynamic ASP.NET websites quickly and easily.
Prior to ASP.NET, Microsoft's dynamic web programming technology was called Active Server Pages, or ASP. Although ASP was a popular choice for creating dynamic websites, it lacked important features found in other programming technologies. Microsoft remedied ASP's shortcomings with ASP.NET. ASP.NET version 1.0 was released in January 2002 and quickly became the web programming technology of choice for many. In November 2005, Microsoft released the much-anticipated version 2.0. Two years later, in November 2007, Microsoft released ASP.NET version 3.5.
Before we can start creating our first ASP.NET website, we need to install the .NET Framework, Visual Web Developer, and SQL Server 2005. The .NET Framework is a rich platform for creating Windows-based applications and is the underlying technology used to create ASP.NET websites.
Visual Web Developer is a sophisticated program for creating, editing, and testing ASP.NET websites and web pages. ASP.NET web pages are simple text files, so any text editor will suffice (such as Microsoft Notepad), but if you've created websites before, you know that using tools such as Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe Dreamweaver makes the development process much easier than using a generic text editor like Notepad. This is the case for ASP.NET, as well.
The third and final piece we'll need to install is SQL Server 2005. SQL Server is a database engine, which is a specialized application designed to efficiently store and query data. Many websites interact with databases; any e-commerce website, for example, displays product information and records purchase orders in a database. Starting with Hour 13, "An Introduction to Databases," we'll see how to create, query, and modify databases through both Visual Web Developer and ASP.NET pages.
This hour focuses on getting everything set up properly so that we can start creating ASP.NET web applications. Although it would be nice to be able to jump straight into creating ASP.NET pages, it is important that we first take the time to ensure that the pieces required for ASP.NET are correctly installed and configured. We create a very simple ASP.NET page at the end of this hour, but we won't explore it in any detail. We look at ASP.NET pages in more detail in the next hour and in Hour 4, "Designing, Creating, and Testing ASP.NET Pages."
What Is ASP.NET?
Have you ever wondered how dynamic websites like Amazon.com work behind the scenes? As a shopper at Amazon.com, you are shown a particular web page, but the web page's content is dynamic, based on your preferences and actions. For instance, if you have an account with Amazon.com, when you visit Amazon.com's home page your name is shown at the top and a list of personal recommendations is presented further down the page. When you type an author's name, a title, or a keyword into the search text box, a list of matching books appears. When you click a particular book's title, you are shown the book's details along with comments and ratings from other users. When you add the book to your shopping cart and check out, you are prompted for a credit card number, which is then billed.
Web pages in websites whose content is determined dynamically based on user input or other information are called dynamic web pages. Any website's search engine page is an example of a dynamic web page because the content of the search results page is based on the search criteria the user entered and the searchable documents on the web server. Another example is Amazon.com's personal recommendations. The books and products that Amazon.com suggests when you visit the home page are different from the books and products suggested for someone else. Specifically, the recommendations are determined by the products you have previously viewed and purchased.
The opposite of a dynamic web page is a static web page. Static web pages contain content that does not change based on who visits the page or other external factors. HTML pages, for example, are static web pages. Consider an HTML page on a web-site with the following markup:
Such a page is considered a static web page because regardless of who views the page or what external factors might exist, the output will always be the same: the text Hello, World! displayed in a bold font. The only time the content of a static web page changes is when someone edits and saves the page, overwriting the old version.
Virtually all websites today contain a mix of static and dynamic web pages. will you find a website that has just static web pages, because such pages are so limited in their functionality.
By learning ASP.NET, you will learn how to create websites that contain dynamic web pages. It is important to understand the differences between how a website serves static web pages versus dynamic web pages.
Competing Web Programming Technologies
ASP.NET is only one of many technologies that can be employed to generate dynamic web pages. ASP.NET is the successor to Active Server Pages (ASP), which was Microsoft's earlier dynamic web-page creation technology. Other technologies include PHP, JSP, and ColdFusion.
Personally, I find ASP.NET to be the easiest and most powerful technology of the bunch, which is why I'm writing a book about ASP.NET instead of one of the competing technologies. Moreover, the features and functionality of ASP.NET are head and shoulders above ASP. If you've created ASP pages in the past, you'll no doubt find that you can do the same things with ASP.NET but in a fraction of the time.
If you have experience developing web applications with other web programming technologies, such as ASP, PHP, or JSP, you may already be well versed in the material covered in the next three sections. If this is the case, feel free to skip to the "Installing the ASP.NET Engine, Editor, and Database System" section.
