Custom ASP.NET Web Application Development
Robust, Scalable and World Class
Microsoft ASP.NET is a free technology that allows programmers to create dynamic web applications. ASP.NET can be used to create anything from small, personal websites through to large, enterprise-class web applications and XML web services. It was first released in January 2002 with version 1.0 of the .NET Framework, and is the successor to Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASP) technology. ASP.NET is built on the Common Language Runtime, allowing programmers to write ASP.NET code using any supported .NET language.
ASP.NET combined with the .NET Framework 3.5 provides a powerful solution to create web applications and seamless integration with mobile devices in a short timeframe. With third-party enhancements such as UI controls from Telerik, rich UI web applications can be developed that rival desktop applications.
ASP.NET integrates tightly with the Windows operating system allowing developers to take full advantage of a wealth of additional components and services that historically were only available to desktop applications.
In spite of the vast amount of resources that ASP.NET puts at a developer's disposal, developers at Mobilgistix always use the most up-to-date features and versions when developing new applications. This ensures that your application will have a longer life expectancy and be able to take advantage of current trends going on in the world of software development. When clients lack the knowledge to decide what development platform to choose for developing their application, Mobilgistix tends to recommend ASP.NET for the following reasons...
Productivity
Easy Programming Model. ASP.NET makes building real world Web applications dramatically easier. ASP.NET server controls enable an HTML-like style of declarative programming that let you build great pages with far less code than with classic ASP. Displaying data, validating user input, and uploading files are all amazingly easy. Best of all, ASP.NET pages work in all browsers -- including Netscape, Opera, AOL, and Internet Explorer.
Multiple Programming Language Model. ASP.NET lets you leverage your current programming language skills. Unlike classic ASP, which supports only interpreted VBScript and JScript, ASP.NET now supports more than 25 .NET languages (including built-in support for VB.NET, C#, and JScript.NET -- no tool required), giving you unprecedented flexibility in your choice of language.
Rapid Application Development with Visual Studio 2008. Visual Studio 2008 adds the productivity of Visual Basic-style development to the Web. Now you can visually design ASP.NET Web Forms using familiar drag-drop-doubleclick techniques, and enjoy full-fledged code support including statement completion and color-coding. VS.NET also provides integrated support for debugging and deploying ASP.NET Web applications.
The Professional version of Visual Studio 2008 deliver life-cycle features to help organizations plan, analyze, design, build, test, and coordinate teams that develop ASP.NET Web applications. These include UML class modeling, database modeling (conceptual, logical, and physical models), testing tools (functional, performance and scalability), and enterprise frameworks and templates, all available within the integrated Visual Studio .NET environment.
Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Web Developer Express Edition offer significantly improved IntelliSense for coding in ECMAScript (JScript or JavaScript), and for writing client script for AJAX-style Web applications that use the Microsoft AJAX Library. IntelliSense is available for client script in script elements and for referenced .js script files. Additionally, IntelliSense displays XML code comments. XML code comments are used to describe the summary, parameter, and return details of your client script. ASP.NET AJAX also uses XML code comments to provide IntelliSense for ASP.NET AJAX types and members. IntelliSense is also supported for external script file references that use XML code comments.
The .NET Framework. Application features that used to be hard to implement, or required a 3rd-party component, can now be added in just a few lines of code using the .NET Framework. The .NET Framework offers over 4500 classes that encapsulate rich functionality like XML, data access, file upload, regular expressions, image generation, performance monitoring and logging, transactions, message queuing, SMTP mail, and much more!
Performance and Scalability
Runtime Compiling. ASP.NET is much faster than classic ASP, while preserving the "just hit save" update model of ASP. However, no explicit compile step is required! ASP.NET will automatically detect any changes, dynamically compile the files if needed, and store the compiled results to reuse for subsequent requests. Dynamic compilation ensures that your application is always up to date, and compiled execution makes it fast. Most applications migrated from classic ASP see a 3x to 5x increase in pages served.
Output Caching. ASP.NET output caching can dramatically improve the performance and scalability of your application. When output caching is enabled on a page, ASP.NET executes the page just once, and saves the result in memory in addition to sending it to the user. When another user requests the same page, ASP.NET serves the cached result from memory without re-executing the page. Output caching is configurable, and can be used to cache individual regions or an entire page. Output caching can dramatically improve the performance of data-driven pages by eliminating the need to query the database on every request.
Web Farm Session State. ASP.NET session state lets you share session data user-specific state values across all machines in your Web farm. Now a user can hit different servers in the web farm over multiple requests and still have full access to her session. And since business components created with the .NET Framework are free-threaded, you no longer need to worry about thread affinity.
Faster Performance than Java (J2EE). In a head-to-head comparison of performance and scalability between Sun's Java Pet Store J2EE blueprint application and the ASP.NET implementation, Microsoft .NET significantly outperformed J2EE. The bottom line: the ASP.NET implementation required only 1/4th as many lines of code, was 28x faster (that's 2700%), and supported 7.6x as many concurrent users as J2EE, with only 1/6th as much processor utilization. Click here to review the results, download the code, and run the .NET Pet Shop yourself.
Reliability
Memory Leak, DeadLock and Crash Protection. ASP.NET automatically detects and recovers from errors like deadlocks and memory leaks to ensure your application is always available to your users. For example, say that your application has a small memory leak, and that after a week the leak has tied up a significant percentage of your server's virtual memory. ASP.NET will detect this condition, automatically start up another copy of the ASP.NET worker process, and direct all new requests to the new process. Once the old process has finished processing its pending requests, it is gracefully disposed and the leaked memory is released. Automatically, without administrator intervention or any interruption of service, ASP.NET has recovered from the error.
Deploy Applications Easily
Simply Copy Files to Web Server. ASP.NET dramatically simplifies installation of your application. With ASP.NET, you can deploy an entire application as easily as an HTML page: just copy it to the server. No need to run regsvr32 to register any components, and configuration settings are stored in an XML file within the application.
Update Application on the Fly. ASP.NET now lets you update compiled components without restarting the web server. In the past with classic COM components, the developer would have to restart the web server each time he deployed an update. With ASP.NET, you simply copy the component over the existing DLL -- ASP.NET will automatically detect the change and start using the new code.
Multiple Application Models
XML Web Services. XML Web services allow applications to communicate and share data over the Internet, regardless of operating system or programming language. ASP.NET makes exposing and calling XML Web Services simple. Any class can be converted into an XML Web Service with just a few lines of code, and can be called by any SOAP client. Likewise, ASP.NET makes it incredibly easy to call XML Web Services from your application. No knowledge of networking, XML, or SOAP is required.
The .NET Framework version 3.5 enables you to create both ASP.NET (.asmx) and WCF-based Web services that you can call from Web pages in client script by using the Microsoft AJAX Library. You can also call server-based application services that are exposed as Web services, which includes forms authentication, roles management, and profiles. These application services can be consumed in WCF-compatible applications, which includes AJAX-enabled Web pages and Window Forms clients. As a result, applications that are built with these ASP.NET or WCF technologies can share information that is made available by application services.
Mobile Web Device Support. ASP.NET Mobile Controls let you easily target cell phones, PDAs -- over 80 mobile Web devices -- using ASP.NET. You write your application just once, and the mobile controls automatically generate WAP/WML, HTML, or iMode as required by the requesting device.
Web Server Integration
Integration with IIS 7.0. The .NET Framework version 3.5 is also integrated with IIS 7.0. You can now use ASP.NET services such as forms authentication and caching for all content types, not just ASP.NET Web pages (.aspx files). This is because ASP.NET and IIS 7.0 use the same request pipeline. The unified request processing pipeline means that you can use managed code to develop HTTP pipeline modules that work with all requests in IIS. In addition, IIS and ASP.NET modules and handlers now support unified configuration.
Ajax Enabled Web Applications
The .NET Framework version 3.5 enables you to create Web applications that feature next-generation user interfaces with reusable client components. You can develop Web pages by using a server-based approach, a client-based approach, or a combination of both, according to your requirements. The AJAX server-based and client-based programming models feature the following:
Partial Page Updates. The .NET Framework version 3.5 enables you to easily enable asynchronous partial-page updates in a page, which avoids the overhead of full-page postbacks. You can just put existing controls and markup inside UpdatePanel controls. Postbacks from inside an UpdatePanel control become asynchronous postbacks and refresh only the part of the page that is inside the panel, which creates a more fluid user experience. You can display the progress of the partial-page update by using UpdateProgress controls.
Server controls that support server-based AJAX development. This includes the ScriptManager, UpdatePanel, UpdateProgress, and Timer controls. These controls enable you to create rich client behavior with little or no client script, such as partial-page rendering and displaying update progress during asynchronous postbacks.
Browser Independent. The Microsoft AJAX Library, which supports client-based, object-oriented development that is browser independent. In addition to supporting the new AJAX-enabled server controls, the client library enables you to develop custom client components that extend DOM elements or that represent a DOM element.
Support for Localization and Globalization. Support for script globalization and localization by using client script. Globalization enables you to display dates and numbers based on a culture value (locale). Localization enables you to specify localized content (text, images, and so on) in client components for UI elements or exception messages.
Client-side XML Web Service Support. Access to Web services and to ASP.NET authentication, roles management, and profile application services.
Last Updated: 05 June 2008