Chapter 1. ASP.NET and the .NET Framework

Microsoft first announced ASP.NET (then called ASP+) and the .NET platform in July, 2000. In essence, .NET is a new development framework that provides a fresh application programming interface to the services and APIs of classic Windows operating systems, especially Windows 2000, Windows XP, and the recently released Windows Server 2003, while bringing together a number of disparate technologies that emerged from Microsoft during the late 1990s. Among the latter are COM+ component services, a commitment to XML and object-oriented design, support for new web services protocols such as SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI, and a focus on the Internet.

ASP.NET is significant enhancement to and extension of classic Microsoft ASP. ASP programmers will be very pleased by how easy the transition to ASP.NET is, yet there is tremendous power and flexibility in the new development platform. ASP and ASP.NET applications can run side by side, allowing for easy migration of legacy applications.

This chapter introduces both ASP.NET and the .NET platform, notably the .NET Framework.