ASP.net Basics

What is ASP.NET?
ASP.NET is a server side scripting technology that enables scripts (embedded in web pages) to be executed by an Internet server.

ASP.NET is a Microsoft Technology
ASP stands for Active Server Pages
ASP.NET is a program that runs inside IIS
IIS (Internet Information Services) is Microsoft's Internet server
IIS comes as a free component with Windows servers
IIS is also a part of Windows 2000 and XP Professional

What is an ASP.NET File?
An ASP.NET file is just the same as an HTML file
An ASP.NET file can contain HTML, XML, and scripts
Scripts in an ASP.NET file are executed on the server
An ASP.NET file has the file extension ".aspx"

How Does ASP.NET Work?
When a browser requests an HTML file, the server returns the file
When a browser requests an ASP.NET file, IIS passes the request to the ASP.NET engine on the server
The ASP.NET engine reads the file, line by line, and executes the scripts in the file
Finally, the ASP.NET file is returned to the browser as plain HTML

What is ASP+?
ASP+ is the same as ASP.NET.

ASP+ is just an early name used by Microsoft when they developed ASP.NET.

ASP.NET is Not ASP
ASP.NET is the next generation ASP, but it's not an upgraded version of ASP.

ASP.NET is an entirely new technology for server-side scripting. It was written from the ground up and is not backward compatible with classic ASP.


ASP.NET is the major part of the Microsoft's .NET Framework.