Chapter 1. Architecture

1. Architecture

UNLIKE ITS PREDECESSOR, ASP.NET 2.0 is not a fundamentally new way of building Web applications. Instead, ASP.NET 2.0 primarily adds new features on top of an existing architecture with the goal of simplifying many common tasks. This is not to say that this is a small releasequite the contrary. With more than double the number of classes and over 40 new controls, there is more than enough "newness" to keep even the most avid ASP.NET developer busy for quite some time exploring new features.

The core architecture, however, which consists of pages being parsed into class definitions and compiled into assemblies remains essentially unchanged, as does the HTTP pipeline used to process requests. In fact, it is possible to host most sites built for ASP.NET 1.1 directly in 2.0 without modification, as all existing features of the 1.1 runtime are completely supported in this release.

With that in mind, this introductory chapter focuses on the architectural changes that are made in 2.0 and how these changes affect the way you build Web applications in ASP.NET. These changes include a new codebehind mechanism, several new Page events, new specially named compilation directories, the new ASP.NET compiler utility that enables static site compilation, and Web Application Projects.