ASP.NET Introduction

ASP.NET is the latest version of Microsoft's Active Server Pages technology (ASP).

What you should already know

Before you continue you should have a basic understanding of the following:

• WWW, HTML and the basics of building Web pages
• Scripting languages like JavaScript or VBScript
• The basics of server side scripting

If you want to study these subjects first, find the tutorials on our Home Page

What is ASP?

ASP is a server side scripting technology that enables scripts (embedded in web pages) to be executed by an Internet server.

• ASP is a Microsoft Technology
• ASP stands for Active Server Pages
• ASP is a program that runs inside IIS
• IIS stands for Internet Information Server
• IIS comes as a free component with Windows 2000
• IIS is also a part of the Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack
• The Option Pack can be downloaded from Microsoft
• PWS is a smaller - but fully functional - version of IIS
• PWS can be found on your Windows 95/98 CD

What is an ASP File?

• An ASP file is just the same as an HTML file
• An ASP file can contain text, HTML, XML, and scripts
• Scripts in an ASP file are executed on the server
• An ASP file has the file extension ".asp"

How Does it Work?

• When a browser requests an HTML file, the server returns the file
• When a browser requests an ASP file, IIS passes the request to ASP
• ASP engine reads the file, line by line, and executes the scripts in the file
• Finally, the ASP file is returned to the browser as plain HTML

Before you study ASP.NET, it would help to have a basic understanding of Microsoft's ASP technology.

To learn more about ASP, you can study our ASP tutorial.

What is ASP+?

ASP+ is the same as ASP.NET.

ASP+ is just an early name used by Microsoft when they developed ASP.NET.

What is ASP.NET?

ASP 3.0 is the latest version of ASP, but there will never be an ASP 4.0 version.

ASP.NET is the next generation ASP, but it's not an upgraded version of ASP. ASP.NET is an entirely new paradigm for server-side ASP scripting.

ASP.NET is a part of the new .NET (dotnet) Framework. Microsoft spent three years rewriting ASP.NET from the ground up, and ASP.NET is not fully backward compatible with ASP 3.0.

You can read more about the differences between ASP and ASP.NET in the next chapter of this tutorial.

.NET Framework

The .NET Framework is the infrastructure for the new Microsoft .NET Platform. 

The .NET Framework is a common environment for building, deploying, and running Web applications and Web Services.

The .NET Framework contains a common language runtime and common class libraries - like ADO.NET, ASP.NET and Windows Forms - to provide advanced standard services that can be integrated into a variety of computer systems.

The .NET Framework provides a feature-rich application environment, simplified development and easy integration between a number of different development languages.

The .NET Framework is language neutral. Currently it supports C++, C#, Visual Basic, and JScript (The Microsoft version of JavaScript).

Microsoft's Visual Studio.NET is a common development environment for the new .NET Framework.

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