ASP.NET is the successor to “classic” ASP technology, the world’s leading web development tool. ASP.NET solves many of the problems associated with ASP and provides an integrated and consistent approach to software development that builds on the libraries and languages of the .NET platform.
This book will teach you all you need to know to be effective with ASP.NET. We assume you have some background with either C# or Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET), or sufficient programming experience to pick up what you need to know from the examples shown. Experience with “classic” ASP will help, but it is not required.
ASP.NET is not difficult. All of the concepts are straightforward, and the Visual Studio .NET environment greatly simplifies building powerful web applications. The difficulty in ASP.NET is only that it is so complete and flexible that there are many pieces that must be woven together to build a robust, scalable, and efficient application.
Since there are two authors’ names on this book, you might be concerned that the tone will be uneven. Every possible measure has been taken to avoid this. Although each chapter was initially written by one author, all chapters were then edited by both authors. Then every chapter was extensively edited and rewritten by Jesse Liberty to give the book a single voice. And if that weren’t enough, the chapters were subsequently edited by the O’Reilly editors, and then again by the authors. The bottom line is that while two authors wrote this book, you should find that it reads as if written by a single author.
Chapter 1 is an introduction to ASP.NET and the .NET platform.
Chapter 2 gives you the simplest possible application you might build with ASP.NET. It also introduces ASP.NET development within the Visual Studio .NET environment.
The next three chapters -- Chapter 3, Chapter 4, and Chapter 5--provide complete coverage of HTML Server Controls and ASP Controls. (Note that Chapter 10, Chapter 13, and Chapter 14 round out the extensive discussion of controls in ASP.NET.)
Chapter 6, covers several fundamental concepts crucial to building powerful web applications, including code segregation, state management, control life cycle, and the usage of Visual Studio .NET.
Chapter 7 examines Tracing, Debugging,andErrorHandling in ASP.NET.
Chapter 8 looks at Validation. ASP.NET provides extensive support for data validation, including range checking, ensuring that a choice has been made, checking that values are within a range and matching regular expressions. The ASP.NET Framework will automatically and invisibly take advantage of the capabilities of up-level browsers (e.g., IE6) to do the data validation at the client, while still providing server-based validation for down-level browsers.
Chapter 9 looks at DataBinding, the powerful ability to bind complex user interface controls to database tables and other data structures.
Chapter 10 examines the List-BoundControls,PartI, including the incredibly powerful data grid. This chapter also looks at the event-driven nature of ASP.NET controls.
Chapter 11 focuses on AccessingDatawithADO.NET and the new technology for interacting with back-end databases. ADO.NET is built on a disconnected data set that provides a subset of the database, complete with multiple tables and full encapsulation of the relationships among the tables. ADO.NET is, essentially, an object-oriented model of your data.
Chapter 12, looks at the support provided in ADO.NET for updating your data and ensuring data integrity in the presence of concurrency issues. This chapter also explains a variety of techniques for supporting transactions
Chapter 13, explores advanced techniques integrating these powerful tools with the ADO.NET technology.
Chapter 14, covers the powerful yet easy to use technology that allows you to extend ASP.NET to create controls customized for your specific problem domain.
Chapter 15 is a WebServicesOverview, which are essentially web applications without a user interface. Web services allow you to provide services, potentially for a fee, to other web sites or applications. Chapter 16, and Chapter 17, complete the comprehensive discussion of this subject.
Chapter 18 looks at CachingandPerformance, focusing on issues related to building fast, scalable applications.
Chapter 19 examines Security and the tremendous support provided by the .NET Framework for building secure applications.
Chapter 20 covers Controlling,Configuring,andDeployingApplications. The .NET platform greatly simplifies building ASP.NET applications, with text file configuration and XCOPY deployment.
Appendix A provides a crash course in RelationalDatabaseTechnology, and Appendix B is a reference to BugDatabaseArchitecture.
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