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Designing Microsoft ASP.NET Applications Table of Contents Designing Microsoft ASP.NET Applications Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1 - Introduction to ASP.NET Development Chapter 2 - Managed Code and the Common Language Runtime Chapter 3 - The .NET Framework Objects and Languages Chapter 4 - ASP.NET Development 101 Chapter 5 - Web Forms Chapter 6 - Creating ASP.NET Components Chapter 7 - Balancing Server and Client Functionality Chapter 8 - Time to Get the Data Chapter 9 - Data and ASP.NET Forms Chapter 10 - XML Web Services Appendix A - Configuring ASP.NET Applications in IIS Appendix B - What You Need to Know About HTML to Use This Book Index List of Figures List of Tables List of Listings List of Sidebars Introduction When I look down, I miss all the good stuff. And when I look up, I just trip over things. —Ani DiFranco When I first heard about ASP.NET at a Microsoft author’s conference over a year ago, I thought it might just be too good to be true. I can now create Web pages that are based on compiled code, in one of many very cool, object-oriented languages? I can use real variables with types and all? I can create server-side components using the .NET languages that will allow me to encapsulate all kinds of functionality that my applications need, and I don’t have to worry about deploying COM components? I can use special validator components to magically test values entered on the client and the server? As I said, it sounded too good to be true. In fact, ASP.NET lets you do all that and more. ASP.NET has quite simply changed the way I build Web applications. While doing some heavy -duty Active Server Pages (ASP) programming, I always tried to move any functionality I could into the database because the deployment issues in the database were much easier to deal with than the deployment issues with ASP files spread over a cluster of machines. I no longer have to do that, and neither will you! Of course, with the new abilities comes some additional complexity. The only thing harder than working with all this new Microsoft .NET Framework complexity is trying to describe it. While working on many of the chapters in this book, I felt like the writer quoted above. Dealing with all the nitty-gritty details might hide the total coolness of what I was doing, yet just looking at the cool results without seeing the details can trip you up. I’ve tried to give you the details you need to know to get the job done, but the entire .NET Framework is huge. There are literally thousands of classes. In many places, I’ve referred you to the MSDN documentation included with the .NET Framework, and I encourage you to use it. If you need to do something with strings, look up the System.String class on MSDN. If file access is important, look at the System.IO namespace. I’ve tried to refrain from reproducing the same information that the MSDN documentation offers, except in areas in which exhaustive reference source, and this book is more of a tutorial that, after some basics are covered, will take you through realworld problems and solutions. Both types of information sources have their place. Who Should Read This Book ASP.NET provides an opportunity for developers currently working with ASP to create more powerful and scalable Web applications. At the same time, ASP.NET provides developers who haven’t previously been involved with Web development with a new opportunity to begin developing Web applications. Because of the two likely audiences for this book, I don’t assume that all readers will have tremendous experience with Web development. That said, if you don’t understand HTML at all, you need to make sure you know at least what’s covered in Appendix B. Because you can use both Microsoft Visual Basic .NET and C# with ASP.NET, I don’t focus on one language to the exclusion of the other. A Visual Basic programmer or a C++ programmer new to ASP.NET should be able to follow the samples.