Exploring ASP.NET

ASP.NET is a server-side technology that enables programmers to create dynamic Web applications. It has a number of advanced features such as simplicity, security, and scalability that help s in developing robust Web applications. These advanced features of ASP.NET are based on the .NET Framework.

ASP.NET in the .NET Framework

ASP.NET is built on the Microsoft .NET Framework. Microsoft introduced the .NET Framework to help developers create globally distributed software with Internet functionality and interoperability.

ASP.NET has the following elements:

    • Web Form Pages

    • Configuration files

    • XML Web Service files

Web forms and the state management feature of ASP.NET constitute the ASP.NET Page Framework. The ASP.NET runtime services include view state, session state, and application state management, Web security and the caching mechanism of ASP.NET applications.

The runtime services of ASP.NET interact with .NET Framework base classes, which in turn, interact with the Common Language Runtime (CLR) to provide a robust Web-based development environment.

Working of an ASP.NET Application

After creating an ASP.NET application, the ASP.NET files need to be stored on a Web server such as Internet Information Services (IIS) server, which is the Web server for the Windows platform. he Web server processes the ASP.NET files and then executes the scripts. Finally, the results are sent to the Web browser that requested the ASP.NET file.

The following figure depicts how a Web Server processes a request for an ASP.NET file:

The steps involved in the execution of an ASP.NET file are:

    1. A Web Browser sends a request for an ASP.NET file to a Web server by using a Uniform Resource Locator (URL).

    2. The Web server, such as IIS, receives the request and retrieves the appropriate ASP.NET file from the disk or memory.

    3. The Web server forwards the ASP.NET file to the ASP.NET script engine for processing.

    4. The ASP.NET script engine reads the file and executes any server -side script it encounters.

    5. The processed ASP.NET file is generated as an HTML page.

    6. The Web server then sends the HTML page to the client.

    7. The Web browser interprets the output and displays it.

A Web server generates and sends only the HTML output to the client. As a result, it helps to hide the code of the ASP.NET file from the users who access an ASP.NET Web page.

Note: ASP.NET script engine is the engine that processes the server-side scripts contained in an ASP.NET application. After processing the scripts, the engine renders the result as an HTML document and sends it back to the browser.

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