Many of the key symbols remain the same, and even some of the syntax survives. However, the entire underlying execution model changed dramatically between classic ASP and ASP.NET.
After completing this tutorial, you will be able to
- Create an IIS Virtual Directory
- Develop an HTML page into an ASP.NET application
- Mix HTML with executable code and work with server side script blocks
- Locate and view the assembly compiled by ASP.NET using your ASPX file
- Work with code-behind and code-beside execution models
Whereas executing classic ASP pages was primarily an exercise in rendering HTML, interpreting script code, and calling Component Object Model code, ASP.NET introduces an entirely new object-oriented execution model. ASP.NET execution centers around CLR classes that implement an interface named IHttpHandler. ASP.NET includes a number of classes that already implement IHttpHandler, and you may actually write your own implementation from scratch.
We'll examine the ASP.NET execution model and show what's new in ASP.NET 2.0. We'll take a bottom-up approach, showing how the simplest ASP.NET page executes. Along the way we'll introduce various ASP.NET programming techniques including code behind. We'll see how ASP.NET's compilation model works. Finally, we'll observe how ASP.NET's Web Form architecture operates and how it's all nicely wrapped up by Visual Studio 2005.
Let's start by studying a simple page to discover how we can evolve it using ASP.NET's programming techniques.