Datasheet

❑ Increase developer productivity: This partly relates to reducing the amount of code required,

but is also affected by more server controls encompassing complex functionality, as well as pro-

viding better solutions for common web site scenarios (such as portals and personalized sites).

❑ Provide the fastest web server platform: Although ASP.NET 1.x offered a fast server platform,

ASP.NET 2.0 will improve areas such as application start-up times and provide better applica-

tion tracing and performance data. Innovative caching features will enhance application perfor-

mance, especially when SQL Server is used.

❑ Support for mobile development: In ASP.NET 1.0, the Microsoft Mobile Internet Toolkit (MMIT

in version 1.0 and ASP.NET Mobile Controls in version 1.1) provided this support, including

separate controls for building web pages suitable for small screen browsers. In ASP.NET 2.0, the

MMIT is no longer required because mobile support is built into all controls. This reduces the

amount of code required, as well as the need for specialist knowledge about mobile platforms.

❑ Provide the best hosting solution: With the large number of Internet applications being hosted,

it’s important to provide better solutions for hosters. For example, better management features

to identify and stop rogue applications will give hosters more control over their current envi-

ronment. More control can also be given to hosted companies by use of the new web-based

administration tool, allowing users to easily control the configuration of applications remotely.

❑ Provide easier and more sophisticated management features: Administration of ASP.NET appli-

cations under version 1.x required manual editing of the XML configuration file, which is not a

great solution for administrators. Version 2.0 brings a graphical user interface–based administra-

tion tool that is integrated with the Internet Information Services (IIS) administration tool.

❑ Easy implementation of entire scenarios: The better management features are built on top of a

management application programming interface (API), allowing custom administration pro-

grams to be created. Along with application packaging, this will provide support for easily

deployable applications, with or without source.

Even from this broad set of aims, you can see that ASP.NET 2.0 is a great advance from 1.x for both

developers and administrators. For the purposes of this chapter, the features of ASP.NET 2.0 based on

the following three core themes are examined:

❑ Developer productivity

❑ Administration and management

❑ Speed and performance

Note that this chapter isn’t an in-depth look at any specific feature— instead it gives you a taste of

what’s to come so that you can see how much easier web development is going to be.

Developer Productivity

One of the goals of ASP.NET 2.0 is to enable developers to easily and quickly build feature-rich web

applications. To accomplish this, Microsoft looked at the existing ASP.NET 1.x applications to identify

the common features, patterns, and code that developers build over and over today. Once they identified

those features, they componentized those features and included them as built-in functionality of

ASP.NET. With ASP.NET 2.0, the ASP.NET team has a goal of reducing the number of lines of code

required for an application by a whopping 70%. To this end, Microsoft has introduced a collective arse-

nal of new features that are now available to developers in ASP.NET 2.0.

Part I: Introduction

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