EQHost is
pleased to announce the addition of ASP.net to its Active
Server Pages supported features.
Active Server Pages,
commonly referred to as ASP, is Microsoft's solution to
server-side scripting. With simple HTML pages, the client (a
web surfer) requests a web page from a server (some www.domain.com).
The server just sends the file to the client, and the page
is shown on the client's browser. With Active Server
Pages, the server gets a chance to alter the file before
sending it to the user. So, for every request for a file
with a .ASP extension, the server runs the file through a
DLL called ASP.DLL, which parses the ASP commands.
ASP.NET is the
next generation of Active Server Pages. It's Microsoft's
flagship technology for building dynamic, database-driven
Web sites. ASP.NET is a dramatic improvement over
earlier versions of Active Server Pages. Unlike ASP Classic,
ASP.NET uses full compiled programming languages such as
Visual Basic, Visual C++, and C#.
ASP.NET is more than
the next version of Active Server Pages (ASP); it is a
unified Web development platform that provides the services
necessary for developers to build enterprise-class Web
applications. While ASP.NET is largely syntax compatible
with ASP, it also provides a new programming model and
infrastructure for more secure, scalable, and stable
applications. You can feel free to augment your existing ASP
applications by incrementally adding ASP.NET functionality
to them.
ASP.NET is a
compiled, .NET-based environment; you can author
applications in any .NET compatible language, including
Visual Basic .NET, C#, and JScript .NET. Additionally, the
entire .NET Framework is available to any ASP.NET
application. Developers can easily access the benefits of
these technologies, which include the managed common
language runtime environment, type safety, inheritance, and
so on.
ASP.NET has been
designed to work seamlessly with WYSIWYG HTML editors and
other programming tools, including Microsoft Visual Studio
.NET. Not only does this make Web development easier, but it
also provides all the benefits that these tools have to
offer, including a GUI that developers can use to drop
server controls onto a Web page and fully integrated
debugging support.
Developers can
choose from the following two features when creating an
ASP.NET application, Web Forms and Web services, or combine
these in any way they see fit.
- Web Forms allows
you to build powerful forms-based Web pages.
- An XML Web
service provides the means to access server functionality
remotely. Using Web services, businesses can expose
programmatic interfaces to their data or business logic,
which in turn can be obtained and manipulated by client
and server applications.
Each of these models
can take full advantage of all ASP.NET features, as well as
the power of the .NET Framework and .NET Framework common
language runtime. These features and how you can use them
are outlined as follows:
- If you have ASP
development skills, the new ASP.NET programming model will
seem very familiar to you. However, the ASP.NET object
model has changed significantly from ASP, making it more
structured and object-oriented. Unfortunately this means
that ASP.NET is not fully backward compatible; almost all
existing ASP pages will have to be modified to some extent
in order to run under ASP.NET.
- Accessing
databases from ASP.NET applications is an often-used
technique for displaying data to Web site visitors.
ASP.NET makes it easier than ever to access databases for
this purpose. It also allows you to manage the database
from your code.
- ASP.NET provides
a simple model that enables Web developers to write logic
that runs at the application level. Developers can write
this code in the global.asax text file or in a compiled
class deployed as an assembly. This logic can include
application-level events, but developers can easily extend
this model to suit the needs of their Web application.
- Writing custom
debug statements to your Web page can help immensely in
troubleshooting your application's code. However, it can
cause embarrassment if it is not removed. The problem is
that removing the debug statements from your pages when
your application is ready to be ported to a production
server can require significant effort. ASP.NET offers the
Trace Context class, which allows you to write custom
debug statements to your pages as you develop them.
- ASP.NET
configuration settings are stored in XML-based files,
which are human readable and writable. Each of your
applications can have a distinct configuration file and
you can extend the configuration scheme to suit your
requirements.
You can have your ASP
code connect to a database (SQL, Access, Oracle, Informix,
or any ODBC-compliant database) and dynamically insert the
data into your HTML pages. This leads to some very powerful
possibilities including E-Commerce, customizable sites, data
entering / retrieving systems run over the Internet, and some
of the other above mentioned possibilities.
Hosting your ASP.net
(.aspX) pages is now available at EQhost for only $26.25 monthly. This Premium Hosting
Plan will allow you to have unlimited pop3 email accounts
up to 150MB of combined space.
