Describing ASP.NET

A client of mine just asked me to explain the difference between ASP and
ASP.NET. I have managed his pages for 2 years now, they were originally in
bland HTML, progressed to dynamic ASP with databases, and now he is thinking
of upgrading to ASP.NET. Of course, i have no problem with this, but he
wants to know what ASP.NET is. Anyone have any ideas what to tell him?
Jordan

A good place to start is this page:

http://www.asp.net/whitepaper/whyaspnet.aspx?tabindex=0&tabid=1

Many will say it's just MS marketing hype and it is, but it also happens to
be accurate

Once you get into ASP.NET you will never look back, it makes ASP look
primitive in comparison.

--
Kevin Marshall
WebXeL.com Ltd
http://www.webxel.com

ASP.NET Dreamweaver Extensions
http://www.webxel-dw.co.uk



"Jordan Marton" <JMarton (AT) HAHAmarketaxess (DOT) com> wrote

A client of mine just asked me to explain the difference between ASP and
ASP.NET. I have managed his pages for 2 years now, they were originally in
bland HTML, progressed to dynamic ASP with databases, and now he is
thinking
of upgrading to ASP.NET. Of course, i have no problem with this, but he
wants to know what ASP.NET is. Anyone have any ideas what to tell him?
Jordan

Once you get into ASP.NET you will never look back, it makes ASP look
primitive in comparison.

Definetly...and for that matter once you get into C# you'll never do
VB6/VB.NET/VBScript again.

Anyways, what type of site is it? Theres alot of features that the .NET
Framework brings with it (ASP.NET is the web portion of the Framework, as
WinForms is the desktop application portion - they are both unified and
equal because of the Framework). For one, exchange of information between
application is extremely through web services, example:

Suppose your market is real estate companies, offering them a web based
interface to manage property listings and display to clients. Through your
genious and planning you knew all along that eventually these companies
would have the need to share infomation between each other - i.e CompanyA
Real Estate has their database of listings, CompanyB has their database of
listings. If a client to CompanyB wants a property from CompanyA they have
to go to CompanyA and drop CompanyB. But if CompanyA allows CompanyB to view
its listings...then CompanyB has become a referrer to CompanyA. The real
estate industry has MLS, but you have to leave the company's site in order
to access it's search features. Through your .NET designed system, a client
can view listings on CompanyB's site, with no knowledge that the listings
are coming from different databases - data provided through web services.
Web Services is literally a plug and play model - the web service developer
provides the API, the client developer accesses data through that API. The
service provider can charge for use of the service (i.e CompanyA can charge
per-month for CompanyB's usage of the service).

Since .NET applications (ASP.NET, WinForms, MobileForms) run on the .NET
Framework, there is that commonality among them. They all share and utilize
the same assemblies provided by the Framework. Applications developed with
the framework are themselves assemblies (unless using in-line scripting as
in traditional ASP). Since they are assemblies, they can be used by other
..NET applications. So reuse of application logic is a big benefit.

Maybe these thoughts are a bit on the techical side of the topic, but those
are my two main factors, with the third being able to develop on object
oriented models.

--
Ron