ASP.NET 2.0 Simplifies Web Development

ASP.NET is critical to developer adoption of Microsoft’s .NET Framework, and Web developers already using ASP.NET will find ASP.NET 2.0 to be a “no-brainer” upgrade, providing improved performance and manageability and substantially reducing the amount of custom code they must write. For developers using competing products or Microsoft’s Active Server Pages (ASP), the new features may prove tempting enough to entice them to .NET.

In addition to including new features that reduce the amount of code developers must write, ASP.NET 2.0 includes features such as support for membership tracking and personalization that were once the exclusive domain of products such as Commerce Server and SharePoint Portal Server (SPS).

Simplified Development

Microsoft first introduced ASP.NET, the successor to ASP, in July 2000 as part of the initial rollout of VS.NET and the .NET Framework. Since that time, ASP.NET has been the driving force behind much of the initial adoption of the .NET Framework. Microsoft clearly hopes that developers already comfortable using the .NET Framework and languages such as C# and Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET) to build Web-based applications will naturally choose .NET when it comes time to rewrite middle-tier systems, deploy Web services, or build custom client applications.