Introduction to ASP.

Net

ASP.NET:
It stands for Active Server Pages dot Net. Asp.Net is a robust, easy to use solution
for developing complex web sites on Microsoft Dot Net platform.
ASP.Net is a technology to create web pages. Websites are the collection of web
pages, which information stores on a web server which is accessible via Internet. Internet
works on the “client/server model”

Web Server
Client

Htm/html

A server that holds information & the client that wants the information. The client
computer sends a request for information to the client with the information that was
requested of it.

Problems with Internet Technology:

It cannot interact with external resources like if the information is in the form of
flat files or databases or in the n/w.
So we need a Technology to contact with the external resources and to provide the
response back to the client so for this we got a new technology which is SERVER
SIDE TECHNOLOGY like CGI.
 FILES
Client 1 P1

CGI
ENGINE
Client 2

P2

DB

Advantages:
 Process is fast
 Performance is very efficient

Disadvantages:
 Resources of the server are blocked
 So we need a tech to contact the external resources and to provide the response
back to the client without providing burden to the server.
 So we use Servlets Technology.

FLAT FILE
Client 1
SERVLET ENGINE

Client 2
DB
Process
Advantages:
 No burden to the server

Disadvantages:
 Performance is slow.
 So the requirement is a technology to contact the external resources and to
provide the response back to the client without providing burden to the server and
to clients.

SERVER PAGES TECHNOLOGY

FLAT FILE
Client SCRIPT
ENGINE

DB

Created SERVER PAGE

Dynamically

 1. Sun Microsystems
 JSP
 2. Oracle Corporation
 PL/ SQL
 3. Microsoft
 Active server pages

All these 3 technologies are having NO BURDEN TO THE SERVER.

WHY ASP.NET TECHNOLOGY?

ASP

 HTML  USER INTERFACE

 JAVASCRIPT  Client Side Validations
 VB SCRIPT  Server Side Validations
 ASPBUILT IN OBJECTS  request, response
 COM  to contact the external resources

Draw Back of ASP

Suppose you have 100 clients requesting for same page if you send a request for
the 1st time or Nth time it is going to do the same process.

ASP.Net Architecture

Web Server
Client

Complied .aspx
 If the request for the nth time or 2nd time

Web Server
Client

Complied .aspx

 The data is submitted to the same page only.

 Submitting of the data to the same page is called AUTOPOST BACK.
 After the information is provided it should validate the given information.
 You should decide whether the page is requested for the first time or the nth time.
 For this you depend on
 If Page.isPostback = False then the page is requested for the 1st
time.
 If Page.isPostback = True then the page is requested for the nth
time or second time.
 ARCHITECTURE OF ASP.NET

HTTP
REQUEST (.aspx)
Web Server ASP.net Runtime Env
Aspnet_is
Machine.config
api.dll

(.asp)
Asp.dll

Web.config

HTTP
App Domain
RESPONSE

HTTP Handlers

Process
Req

inet_info.exe

 Inet_info.exe  identifies the request and submits the request to the

aspnet_isapi.dll.

 Aspnet_isapi.dll  is a script engine which process the .aspx page

o Then the script engine will submit the request to the ASP.NET runtime
env.
o After verifying all the security issues of both machine.config and
web.config then an AppDomain will be defined for the request and after
processing the request the response will be given to the client as HTTP
response.

 Machine.Config  it is used to maintain the complete configuration details of all

the web applications registered on to the web server of ASP.net

 Web.Config  It is used to maintain the config details about a single web

application.
Where a configuration detail includes security, database connectivity,
state management, trace details of the web application, authentication
and authorization of the applications and globalizations.
 AppDomain: All windows appns run inside a process and this process own
resources such as memory and kernel objects and the threads execute code loaded
into a process. Process is protected from each other by the OS. All these appns are
run on high isolation mode to work safely. The disadvantage of this is memory
resources are blocked. So to achieve this in a single process all the applications
should be made to run which is good to an extent but the draw back is if one
crashes all other are affected. So in .net the code verification feature takes care
that the code is safe to run. so asp.net each application runs its own application
domain and therefore it is protected from other asp.net applications on the same
machine so it ignores the process isolation specified on IIS.

 HTTPHandlers: ASP.net builds upon a extensible architecture known as HTTP

runtime. This is responsible for handling the requests and sending the response. It
is upto an individual handlers such as asp.net or web service to implement the
work done on a request.IIS supports a low level API known as ISAPI for
developing custom solutions like building JSP on IIS. ASP.net implements a
similar concept with HTTP handlers. A request is assigned to ASP.net from IIS
then ASP.net examines entries in the <httphandlers> section based on the
extension of the request to determine which handler the request should be send to.