What is ASP.NET

What is ASP.NET?
ASP.NET is a server side scripting technology that enables scripts (embedded in web pages) to be executed by an Internet server.
• ASP.NET is a Microsoft Technology
• ASP stands for Active Server Pages
• ASP.NET is a program that runs inside IIS
• IIS (Internet Information Services) is Microsoft s Internet server
• IIS comes as a free component with Windows servers
• IIS is also a part of Windows 2000 and XP Professional

Definition :
ASP.NET introduces two major features: Web Forms and Web Services.

Web Forms
Web Forms simplify Web development to the point that it becomes as easy as dragging and dropping controls onto a designer (the surface that you use to edit a page) to design interactive Web applications that span from client to server.

Web Services
A Web service is an application that exposes a programmatic interface through standard access methods. Web Services are designed to be used by other applications and components and are not intended to be useful directly to human end users. Web Services make it easy to build applications that integrate features from remote sources. For example, you can write a Web Service that provides weather information for subscribers of your service instead of having subscribers link to a page or parse through a file they download from your site. Clients can simply call a method on your Web Service as if they are calling a method on a component installed on their system



What is an ASP.NET File?

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



How Does ASP.NET Work?

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



Here are some point that gives the quick overview :

• ASP.NET provides services to allow the creation, deployment, and execution of Web Applications and Web Services
• Like ASP, ASP.NET is a server-side technology
• Web Applications are built using Web Forms. ASP.NET comes with built-in Web Forms controls, which are responsible for generating the user interface. They mirror typical HTML widgets like text boxes or buttons. If these controls do not fit your needs, you are free to create your own user controls.

• Web Forms are designed to make building web-based applications as easy as building Visual Basic applications
ASP.NET is based on the fundamental architecture of .NET Framework. Visual studio provide a uniform way to combine the various features of this Architecture.