ASP.NET

Microsoft’s ASP.NET is a major change from the Active Server Pages (ASP) programming model and eases creation of not only dynamic Web content but also intricate and reliable Web applications, such as Web services.

Although many customers report that this critical piece of Microsoft’s .NET development platform delivers substantial benefits, including improved performance and reliability, developers will have to address differences in the programming model and language support to convert from ASP to ASP.NET.

The primary mission of ASP.NET is to lower barriers to the development of Web applications. It accomplishes this mission in much the same way that Visual Basic (VB) lowered the barrier to Windows programming: by implementing an “event-driven” programming model in which developers add controls to a form and write code to handle the events (such as the entry of data in a text box or the clicking of a button) associated with these controls. ASP.NET also makes it easier to build services that exchange XML data by allowing developers to build on the XML support exposed by the .NET Framework class libraries.