A Fast Track Guide to ASP.NET - Chapter 1

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. So, in particular we are going to be looking at:

• 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

We start with the simple discussion of why ASP.NET has come about.

Evolution or Revolution?

As developers, we are all used to the evolutionary cycle of software product releases, where each new release adds a few features and cures a bunch of bugs. Server--side web technology has followed this pattern, with products such as dbWeb and the IDC rapidly settling into the Active Server Pages we know and love today. ASP 1.0 was released in 1996, and although it has gone through a further two releases, it hasn't really changed that much -- until now. Be prepared to throw away many of those ingrained ASP programming habits, as you've an interesting ride ahead.

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.

Getting Started with ASP.NET

The change to ASP.NET may seem daunting to some, but in the immortal words of Douglas Adams: don't panic! Even though there's been a radical change, the basics of ASP.NET are easy to grasp, especially if you've only ever programmed in Visual Basic before. Another important point to highlight is that ASP.NET sits alongside ASP -- it doesn't touch existing ASP applications at all. Therefore we don't have to worry about anything that we've previously done suddenly stopping working.

Unlike Beta 2 where there were two versions of ASP.NET, the release version comes in a single version, containing all features.

ASP.NET is supported on Windows 2000 (Professional and Server versions), Windows XP, and will be included in Windows .NET Server. It is not supported for Windows NT or the Windows 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.

Installing .NET

Installation is extremely simple, consisting of a single executable. This installs the framework, including ASP.NET, and includes options for the samples and documentation. During installation you may be asked to update the Microsoft Windows Installer components, and if so, you should click the Yes button to update them. This update is required for the .NET SDK installation.

You may also see the following dialog:

This indicates that MDAC 2.7 is not installed on your system. You can press the Ignore button to continue with the setup process -- MDAC 2.7 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 options 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.