What is ASP.Net and where you can use it?

In the world of web and application development, there are many frameworks and languages that developers can choose from. Each framework has features and benefits that make them different. The framework we will be discussing in this blog post is ASP.NET.

So, let's get started -

ASP.NET stands for Active Server Pages .NET and is developed by Microsoft. ASP.NET is an open-source server-side web development platform, which provides a programming model, a comprehensive software infrastructure and various services required to build up robust web applications for PC, as well as mobile devices.

ASP.NET is a very valuable tool for programmers and developers as it allows them to build dynamic web pages, interactive, data-driven web applications over the internet. It consists of a large number of controls such as text boxes, buttons, and labels for assembling, configuring, and manipulating the code to create HTML pages.

ASP.NET works on top of the HTTP protocol and uses the HTTP commands and policies to set a browser-to-server bilateral communication and cooperation. It's a part of Microsoft.Net platform. ASP.NET applications are compiled codes, written using the extensible and reusable components or objects present in .Net framework. These codes can use the entire hierarchy of classes in .Net framework. The ASP.NET application codes can be written in any of the following languages - C#, Visual Basic.Net, JavaScript, etc. It was first released in January 2002 with version 1.0 of the .NET Framework.

These server-side technologies are important contributions to the development of the Web. Amazon.com, eBay.com, and many other popular websites use ASP.NET as the framework for their site; without ASP.NET it would not be possible.

ASP.NET offers several advantages

Rendering HTML

With a bit of skill and creative flair, you can make some rather amazing web applications with ASP.NET. ASP.NET processes all code on the server (in a similar way to a normal application). When the ASP.NET code has been processed, the server returns the resultant HTML to the client. If the client supports JavaScript, then the server will use it to make the client's browser experience quicker and easier.

Common Type System

It provides guidelines for declaring, using, and managing types at runtime, and cross-language communication.

OOP on the Internet

Object-Oriented Programming makes it possible to build extremely large applications, while still keeping your code clean and structured. Now with ASP.NET, you can do the same on the web. Traditional ASP uses HTML and VBScript (or JScript) to process and render pages, but because VBScript is a scripting language, you were forced to write spaghetti code (VBScript was entwined in the HTML and ended up rather messy in larger applications).

Reduce coding time

When you are building large web applications, you’re definitely going to appreciate this framework technology because it has the ability to reduce the amount of time needed to code.

Windows Presentation Foundation

It provides a separation between the user interface and the business logic. It helps in developing visually stunning interfaces using documents, media, two and three-dimensional graphics, animations, and more.

Full control

ASP.NET separates code from the display, and you can even have pages with no ASP.NET code in them at all. By adding references in your HTML (called controls), you can tell ASP.NET that you want a button here, some text there, and then in your code, you can manipulate what these controls look like, what they display, how big they are, etc. Controls can do more than just display information. You can add events to controls, so that when a visitor clicks on a button, for example, ASP.NET executes a function of your choice.

Continuously monitoring

Another reason to love this framework is that of the constant and continuous monitoring. It will continue to monitor applications, components, and pages that it is running. And even better, if the program happens to notice that there are illegal activities taking place like infinite loops and memory leaks, it will immediately destroy all of these activities that shouldn’t be happening and then it will actually restart itself.

Web Services

One great feature of ASP.NET is Web Services. Web services mean that you can literally have several pieces of your application on different servers all around the world, and the entire application will work perfectly and seamlessly. Web services can even work with normal .NET Windows applications. For example, A lot of people would like to have a stock ticker on their website, but not many people want to manually type in all changes to the prices. Web services can be used for so many things: news, currency exchange, login verification.. the ways in which they can be used are limited to your imagination!

ADO.NET

It is the technology used for working with data and databases. It provides access to data sources like SQL Server, OLE DB, XML etc. The ADO.NET allows connection to data sources for retrieving, manipulating, and updating data.

Great XML Support

ASP.NET makes it simple to use XML for data storage, configuration, and manipulation. The tools which are built into ASP.NET for working with XML are very easy to use. XML is excellent for storing information that rarely changes because you can just cache that information in the computer's memory after it has been initially extracted.

LINQ

It imparts data querying capabilities to .Net languages using a syntax which is similar to the tradition query language SQL.

Class Library

ASP.NET includes an enormous class library which was built by Microsoft. Because this class library is so large, it encapsulates a huge number of common functions.

In ASP.NET, you don't write any code to display the data: you just write the code to bind the data to an object called a DataGrid. Then, you just have to create a reference on your page to where that DataGrid should go. The DataGrid will be rendered as a table and will contain all of the data extracted from the database.

Microsoft has created an amazingly well designed MSDN library for ASP.NET and all of the other .NET languages. It includes a full class library containing information and examples on every class, function, method, and property accessible through ASP.NET. This library also includes some tutorials and examples to get you started. It may take you a while to get used to the format and layout of the MSDN ASP.NET library, however, once you do, you will find it's an invaluable resource to aid you throughout your ASP.NET learning experience.

Fully Compatible

One of the most important aims of .NET was to allow developers to write an ASP.NET application using multiple programming languages. As long as each ASP.NET page contains only one programming language, you can mix and match different pages using different languages and they will work together seamlessly. This means you can now have a team of developers with half programming in C#, and the other half in VB.NET, with no need to worry about language incompatibilities, etc.

Cross-platform and container support

With the introduction of .NET Core, you can now create ASP.NET applications and deploy them to Windows, Linux, and macOS. Microsoft and the community have put a huge effort into making Linux a first-class citizen for running ASP.NET.

Containers are eating the clouds these days. Docker, Kubernetes and other technologies are all the rage. ASP.NET Core allows developers to utilize all of these new technologies. Microsoft Azure even has support for deploying your application to containers and Kubernetes.

Why should use it?

When developing a website or an application, there are a bunch of good reasons to use ASP.NET. High speed, low cost, and vast language support are among the most significant benefits. It is reliable, fast, easy to use, and widely known. ASP.NET also allows a developer to choose from many different development environments, also its popularity gives a developer tons of online resources when learning new things, or troubleshooting bugs.

• Websites and applications built with ASP.NET can be faster than a website build with PHP for example. ASP.NET applications are compiled, which means the code is translated into object code, which is then executed. This is faster than code that is translated. The translated code is code that is not directly executed by the machine but is read first then executed. Compiled code is faster than translated code, and can do anything translated code can do.

• Cost is an important factor when developing a website. One of the main benefits of ASP.NET is that it is a very cost-effective solution in terms of development. When setting up a site in PHP for example, you often pay for your development environment, FTP client and maybe even your database server. ASP.NET can be developed almost entirely for free. Your development environment, FTP client, and server costs can easily be avoided. Your only cost in ASP.NET could be hosting.

• ASP.NET is written using Object Oriented Programming languages such as C++, C#, or VB.net. These languages give a developer more control or freedom over their code. Though there is the concern of a learning curve for languages like VB.net or C++, for a language like C#, it is rather easy to pick up, and if you are accustomed to PHP or even Java, then C# is rather easy to pick up.

• The great thing about using a popular framework is that it’s developer community and support is well founded and easy to find. You can read tons of great guides, tips, and even meetups for asp.net across all corners of the internet with a quick google search. Also, products using asp.net are frequently updated to meet modern development standards, so you won’t fall behind in technology.

 

As a whole, ASP.NET is a great framework to use across the board when developing websites, or web applications. Asp.net gives you full control of your development and can easily be used on any project, big or small. So what are you still waiting for? If you aren’t already using asp.net, why not give it a shot? Let’s get started with this next-generation platform!

You can share your experiences with us in the comment section. Thank you!

 

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