[thelist] Competing with ASP.NET

[Ken Schaefer]

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From: "Tim Burgan" <burgan at iprimus.com.au>
Subject: [thelist] Competing with ASP.NET


: Can someone explain .NET, what it's used for, and why
: it's better than ASP?
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Hi Tim,

I suspect that you're asking about the difference between Classic ASP, and
ASP.Net (or, at least, that's the part you're interested in).

ASP.Net gives you a couple of advantages over Classic ASP:
a) a wide choice of languages (C#, VB.Net etc)
b) the use of "real" OO languages, rather than scripting languages
c) an event driven programming environment
d) the ability to seperate code from presentational HTML (either through the
user of Code-Behind pages, or even in a single page model)
e) a huge base-class library (a set of classes provided by Microsoft, plus
you can add/download your own) for doing common tasks - for example
authentication, or data display
f) xcopy deployment (ie, no need to stop server to unregister/reregister
.dlls etc)
g) programmatic access to an entire page lifecycle

You can get more information about ASP.Net in places like:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/
and
http://www.asp.net/

If you're serious about finding out more, and delving into ASP.Net a little,
pick up Steven Walther's "ASP.Net Unleashed" (2nd Edition), as that's
probably the best $50 you could spend in terms of getting an introduction to
ASP.Net

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: Is there an equivalent competitor to this technology that is not
: Microsoft that will run with Apache/PHP etc?
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Well, it may run on Apache, but it won't be PHP. Currently it seems the only
platform that competes across a wide range of features is Sun's Java
platform.

Cheers
Ken

Microsoft MVP - Windows Server (IIS)