Chapter 13. Configuration and Administration

You've seen throughout this book that building Web sites with ASP.NET is easier than ever. Not only have more features been added, but also there's much less code to write, with more use of declarative properties. However, when it comes to administration, the features are splitit's more complex because there are more features to configure, but at the same time it's easier because there is a Web-based administration tool and an API to support it.

For the last chapter in this look at the new ASP.NET features, we'll explore a variety of configuration and administration topics. We'll start by looking at the configuration files, seeing which sections have changed and what the new sections are. Some of this material has been covered elsewhere in the book in more detail, but this chapter provides the definitive reference for the changes in ASP.NET.

We'll then take a look at the Management API, which is the underlying set of classes that provide easy management and configuration. Having a consistent API means that it's easy to build custom configuration routines.

We'll briefly cover the Web Administration Tool, although the only features completed for the Technology Preview release are those for security administration, which were covered in Chapter 6.