Chapter 2: Overview of Web Matrix, ASP.NET, and Visual Basic .NET

In this chapter, I ll provide background information on the programming environment you ll be working in. You ll learn what Microsoft ASP.NET and the Microsoft .NET Framework are. You ll also learn what Web Matrix is and how it helps you work with ASP.NET. I ll explain how Microsoft Visual Basic. NET fits in with Web Matrix. Finally, I ll provide an overview of the fundamental elements of Visual Basic .NET that you ll be using in this book. This chapter is by no means intended to be a thorough study of the relationship between ASP.NET, Web Matrix, and Visual Basic .NET but rather an overview so you ll understand the basics of the tools and techniques you need for creating programmed Web pages.

Web Programming and ASP.NET

I mentioned ASP.NET briefly in Chapter 1. In this section, I ll provide a few more details so that you better understand how Web programming fits in with ASP.NET.

ASP.NET is a set of programs that includes all the components you need to create and run programmed Web pages. It has facilities for getting user requests, creating pages on the fly, and then sending those pages to the user. ASP.NET provides ways for you to work with databases so that you can read and write data. It also includes all the components you need, such as buttons, text boxes, list boxes, and check boxes, to create the user interface elements on Web pages. You can think of ASP.NET as an engine for running Web pages as well as a big box of attachments you can put together in various ways to create different kinds of Web pages.

In fact, ASP.NET is part of a larger set of programs (a framework) called the .NET Framework. The Microsoft .NET Framework is a suite of programs that provides facilities for programming all kinds of Windows- based applications. ASP.NET is the subset of the .NET Framework that specifically works to create Web pages. You ll also work with another integral part of the .NET Framework called Microsoft ADO.NET, which is the set of programs used for working with data.

The diagram in Figure 2-1 will help you visualize what the .NET Framework and ASP.NET are and how they fit together.

Figure 2-1: ASP.NET is the part of the .NET Framework that s designed for creating and running Web pages.

ASP.NET is comparatively simple to work with. (That s a relative statement; ASP.NET is, after all, a programming framework.) ASP.NET is elegant and powerful, and as you ll see, you can use it to build complex Web pages with very little programming. If you ve ever worked with Microsoft Visual Basic, you ll find that ASP.NET offers many similar features, such as pages (forms), controls, standard-looking event handling, and so on, except that these features are all used for creating Web pages.

Just to be clear, ASP.NET is a framework designed for creating commercial-quality Web applications. It has many sophisticated features for security, debugging, performance tuning, interacting with other components, and so on. For the most part, however, we re going to stick with the basic functionality in ASP.NET and won t be exercising any of its more advanced features. However, the advanced features are available when you need them.