Testing ASP.NET Web Applications

1.8. Introducing the ASP.NET Family

When ASP.NET was released in 2002, there was not much of a "family" to speak of. During the past six years, many new components have been developed under the ASP.NET product umbrella and warrant a brief discussion. Throughout this book, we will apply the testing topics and tools for each type of testing discussed in this book — many of the products in the ASP.NET family.

• ASP.NET WebForms. When people think of ASP.NET, developers think of WebForms. WebForms consist of an ASPX file, designer file, and a code-behind file. The majority of ASP.NET applications are built using this technology. In fact, WebForms is the View Rendering template engine which lives on top of the core ASP.NET runtime built using WebForms.

• ASP.NET MVC. The ASP.NET MVC Framework is an implementation of the Model View Controller (MVC) architectural pattern that isolates business logic, data logic, and user interface logic. In the past, Microsoft developers have thought of this type of architecture as layers, but MVC is more about components than layers.

• Silverlight. In 2007, Microsoft released Silverlight, which is a cross-platform/browser, multimedia browser platform for developing Rich Internet Applications (RIA). The user interface is created using the XAML markup language similar to Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).

• ASP.NET Web Services. ASP.NET Web Services are components installed on a web server that allow applications to make HTTP requests to the component and receive ...