Hour 1. Getting Started with ASP.NET 2.0


In this hour, we will cover

  • What is ASP.NET?

  • System requirements for using ASP.NET

  • Software that must be installed prior to using ASP.NET

  • Installing the .NET Framework, Visual Web Developer, and SQL Server 2005

  • Taking a quick tour of Visual Web Developer

  • Creating a simple ASP.NET web page and viewing it through a web browser

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 generated whenever the web page is requested. For example, after you log on, the front page of Amazon.com will show books it recommends for you, based on your previous purchases. This is a dynamic web page because it is a single page whose content is customized based on what customer is visiting the page. In this book we'll 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 for short. 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. 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 of ASP.NET. When designing ASP.NET 2.0, Microsoft focused on identifying common web development tasks and adding functionality to make such tasks a breeze.

Before we can start creating our first ASP.NET website, though, we need to install the .NET Framework, Visual Web Developer, and SQL Server 2005. The .NET Framework is the technology that ASP.NET needs to be able to function. 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 do (such as Microsoft Notepad), but if you've created websites before, you know that using tools like Microsoft FrontPage 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 eCommerce website, for example, displays product information and records purchases 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 will focus 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 will create a very simple ASP.NET page at the end of this hour, but we won't explore it in any detail. We'll look at ASP.NET pages in more detail in the next hour and in Hour 4, "Designing, Creating, and Testing ASP.NET Pages."




Sams Teach Yourself ASP. NET 2.0 in 24 Hours, Complete Starter Kit
Sams Teach Yourself ASP.NET 2.0 in 24 Hours, Complete Starter Kit
ISBN: 0672327384
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 233

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net