The goal of this article is to illustrate some of the new feature in ASP.NET 2.
This article is base on beta 1 release of asp.net 2.
Over the past years we all talked about asp.net 1 /1.1, and how the programmer's
life got changed. Well talking about asp.net 2 it is a revolution. There are so
many things to talk about, from simple login control to role management. In
this article, I will jest go through some the new revolutionary futures. So get
ready for the fun.
Productivity
Talking about the developer productivity, Microsoft says that in ASP.NET version
2 there are 70% less coding than in asp.net 1.1. One of the prime example that
comes to mind when talking about this is the new GridView control. It has built
in capabilities to apply paging, sorting and editing. After you carte a Data
Source Object and assign to grid view control (which I will explain more
later), you only need small changes to do in the property box or in html code
to enable paging and sorting. That's it, no code need, asp.net will do the
paging and sorting for you. Here how the html looks like.
| <asp:GridView ID='GridView1' Runat='server' DataSourceID='SqlDataSource1'
AutoGenerateColumns='False' AllowPaging='True' PageSize='5' AllowSorting='True'>
|
Performance
Thinking about Performance, ASP.NET 2 has included new caching capabilities
Intergrated with Microsoft SQL server, called SQL cache invalidation. You can
now create cache dependencies for Sql tables. With Sql cache invalidation, when
a table changes, ASP.NET will get the latest date from the SQL server,
regardless of output cache duration.
Also now asp.net 2 provides 64-bit support.ASP.NET application will run on
64-bit Intel or AMD processors. Also ASP.NET 2 is backward compatible with
ASP.NET 1/1.1. You can recompile an ASP.NET 1/1.1 application on top of the
.Net framework 2.0.
Mobile Controls?
The next feature I'm going talk is really grate. ASP.NET 2 now has the
capability of determine the output target. What I'm saying is, once you carte a
web page, it will run from internet browser to mobile phone. <asp:> tags
will do all the rending. No need to use separate <mobile:> tags. ASP.NET
server controls now can render from HTML to WML.
User login
One of the common things in developing web based applications is to add security
and role management. We used to create login forms and data base tables to
handle role based security over the years, in asp.net 2 you don't need to crate
login forms. Its build in as a web control and has new APIs to handle user
membership and role management. And to store users and roles asp.net use MS
access as default data base, but also it supports SQL server and active
directory. Not only these, actually it supports anything, you can create your
user storage in oracle if you prefer.
Personalization
Personalization is another cool feature in ASP.NET 2. It has the capability of
personalize an application and store the personalize settings. That means
application can customize color, style, font and ext according to the login
user's preferences. Using personalization APIs with Membership and role
management APIs which I talked earlier, you can make really customizable
applications.
Portal Frameworks and Web Parts
Talking simply, Portal Frameworks and web parts are page customization done by
end users. Web parts are object in the portal framework, end users can open,
close, minimize, maximize or move from one part to another. Portal frame work
enables to build pages that contain web parts. There are new set of controls
available in asp.net 2. Web part manager (portal framework manager control),
Web parts zones, and catalog zone to name few. A good example is the admin
section of MSN space.In there you can
change positions, Add or can Close you web parts.
Master Pages
Master pages are all about visual inheritances. Web sites normally have same
header, menu and footer for all its pages. Earlier developers have to include
this sort of common things every time when they create a page, as a web user
control or in old asp world as a include page. But now once you create a
master page, you can tell asp.net to include that page as a master page to the
new pages.
Administration and Management
Web site administrator's life now getting easier with asp.net 2 includes a
Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in to administrate web sites.
Administrators can now edit machine.config and web.config from this.
Also ASP.Net 2 includes web administration tool which runs in web browser. From
this, administrators can add users , add security like a roles , Create/Manage
access rules, Configure debugging and tracing, Get site counter reports,
Configure SMTP e-mail settings and can do much more.
New Server controls
Asp.net 2 will come with new set of server controls.
° Gridview as I talked early this is a new control to display data with
enhances features.
° Set of controls call Data Source Object which will handle the database work
like connections, retrieving data, manipulating data, sorting, paging, editing
and all the stuff.
° Another set of controls to call login controls to handle user authentication
and user management.
° Web parts controls for you to use in when creating web parts.
° XML base site navigate control and menu control for site navigation
° Tree view control
° And more
And also there some changes happen to the asp.net 1.0 server controls. One cool
thing I have to point out is now from Button, LinkButton and ImageButton server
controls you can easily call client side scripts using OnClientClick property
.here is a small example.
| <script language="javascript"> function print(){ alert("No More
Tsunami"); } </script> <asp:ButtonID = "Button1" Runat = "server"
OnClientClick = "javascript:print()" Text ="Button" />
|
Life getting easier isn't it?
Handling Data
In asp.net 1\1.1 if you need to show data from a data source, you had to go
through some steps, for an example if you want display data from MS SQL server
you need to create set of objects, first you had to create a sqlconnection
object, then create a data adapter with the select command, create a data set ,
afterwards fill the data set with the adapter, then give data set as the Data
Source of the data grid and bind It.
As I mention earlier, in ASP.NET 2 there are set of new data access controls.
It is very easy to use these controls and manipulate data. Actually you don't
need to write any line of coed apart from putting some HTML tags. WHAT!
To display data from SQL server to grid view control, what we have to do is
only write this in HTML.
<asp:GridView ID="GridView1" Runat="server" DataSourceID="SqlDataSource1"
AllowSorting="true">
</asp:GridView>
<asp:SqlDataSource ID="SqlDataSource1" Runat="server" SelectCommand="SELECT
* FROM [Students]" ProviderName="System.Data.SqlClient"<
br>ConnectionString="Server=.;;Database=CDNUG;Persist Security Info=True">
</asp:SqlDataSource>
|
What I have done is , create a grid View control and gave the DataSourceID as
'SqlDataSource1', which is the ID of my SqlDataSource. And for the
SqlDataSource I have given the values for the properties ID, SelectCommand,
ProviderName and ConnectionString.Well that's it. after that you will get a
page with a Grid View control containing data. Apart from SqlDataSource asp.net
have AccessDataSource, ObjectDataSource, DataSetDataSource and
SiteMapDataSource, also you can create your own data Source object.
Visual studio 2005
Asp.net 2 will support the new IDE Visual studio 2005 which has some new advance
features which will integrate with ASP.NET's new enhancements. One off main
advantage in Visual Studio 2005 is, you don't have to install IIS in the
developer machine, it has a built-in web server to run and debug web applications,
and of cause another set of articles will need to talk about visual studio
2005.
Conclusion
With the new and improved features of the Asp.Net 2 and its integration with Visual
studio 2005, asp.net 2 will become a key technology in web development world. Adding
to these new things, the new language enhancements for Visual basic 8.0 and c#
2.0 will rock. Introduction of Generics and partial classes for both VB 8 and
c# 2 and new anonymous methods iterators for c# will get programmers life easy.
So look up for a world of new features. This article was jest an overview, I
will be writing more in dept articles about the asp.net 2 features. I wrote
only some of the key asp.net 2 features, there are lots more to point out.