1、 Moving from Classic ASP to ASP.NET ABSTRACT ASP.NET is Microsoft new offering for Web application development, innovation within ASP.NET have resulted in significant industry popularity for this product. Consequently there is an increased need for ASP.NET education. The Web Application Development
2、is a third year undergraduate course. To meet the demands of both industry and students, we have changed the focus of this course from Classic ASP to ASP.NET. This paper reports this move. The significant features of ASP.NET and the motivations for this move are discussed. The process, the problems
3、encountered, and some helpful online learning resources are described. Key words Web Application Development, Classic ASP, ASP.NET, Move, VB.NET 1. INTRODUCTION ASP.NET is not just a new version of ASP. It provides innovation for moving Windows applications to Web applications. Web services and the
4、.NET framework have made the vision of the Web as the next generation computing platform a reality. With server controls, Web forms and “code-behind”, we can develop a Web application by using a complete object-oriented programming (OOP) model. This increases the popularity of ASP.NET in industry. T
5、he industry project is the final course of the Bachelor of Computing Systems (BCS) degree at UNITEC, in which students undertake a real-world project. We have observed a rapid growth of ASP.NET related industry projects in our school. The Web Application Development (WAD) paper is a third year under
6、graduate course. It was originally offered using ASP 2.0 and ColdFusion. To meet the demands from both industry and students, we have changed the course content to cover ASP.NET, Visual Studio.NET (VS.NET) and ColdFusion. This change commenced with the first semester of 2003. This paper will examine
7、 the features of ASP.NET and explain why these are unique. The motivations for moving to ASP.NET are discussed by analyzing the current situation of ASP.NET related to industry projects in our school, analyzing the results of short surveys on students, and analyzing whether ASP.NET is a better tool
8、for teaching. Problems encountered during the move are also discussed and some of 1 the learning resources are presented. It is anticipated that these will be helpful for teachers who intend to introduce ASP.NET. 2. WHAT MAKES ASP.NET SPECIAL? There are many articles on the Internet discussing the a
9、dvantages of ASP.NET over Classic Active Server Pages (ASP), such as that ASP.NET introduces an integrated development environment (IDE), a single development library for all types of applications, compiled as well as strongly typed code, and a true OO approach to Web application development (Goodye
10、ar, 2002, Bloom, 2002). Traditionally, we have three versions of ASP (ASP 1.0, ASP 2.0 and ASP 3.0), which are called Classic ASP. Although each version provides certain new features to overcome the shortcomings of its predecessors, these versions of ASP follow the same working model and share many
11、limitations. Their successor ASP.NET supports complete new working model while preserving the traditional working model and provides innovative techniques to overcome the limitations of Classic ASP. 2.1. Architecture ASP.NET enhances and extends the Windows DNA (Windows Distributed interNet Applicat
12、ion). The windows DNA specification is a methodology for building n-tier applications using Microsoft (DCOM/COM) technologies. Breaking applications into functional pieces and deploying these across a network is a strategy to make better use of organizational resources. This needs a well-planned arc
13、hitecture. In the past, usually it was the windows DNA. DCOM communication normally has problems with firewalls and proxy servers. This means Windows DNA usually only works well within an intranet, not on the Internet. DCOM/ COM also need registry entries. ASP.NET makes the process of creating and i
14、ntegrating Web Services easier, which can be used in a similar manner to the Windows DNA. Here DCOM/COM is no longer involved. HTTP (as channels), SOAP (as formatters) and XML are used for communication and data-transfer between distributed components. This overcomes 2 the problem of communicating a
15、cross the Internet and across corporate firewalls without resorting to proprietary solutions that require additional communications ports to be opened to external access. In addition, URI (uniform resource identifier) and UDDI (Universal Description Discovery and Integration) are used for remote com
16、ponents references instead of registry entries. 2.2. Development ASP.NET integrates seamlessly with VS.NET IDE. VS.NET includes built-in support for creating and modifying content. This unifies the ASP/VB programming models for the developers. Instead of opening multiple IDEs (as with Classic ASP pl
17、atform), developers can open a single IDE and do all their work from a clean, consistent interface. VS.NET is equipped with powerful debugging environment. This means that the powerful debugger for Windows applications is now available to debug Web applications as well. ASP.NET enables programmers t
18、o take advantage of the OOP model, for example, code sharing. Under OOP model, one of the most common ways to achieve code sharing is inheritance, which is not available in Classic ASP. Since complete OO features are supported in ASP.NET, developers can transfer their OO design smoothly into ASP.NET
19、 code, enabling a software company to keep their Windows application development styles, with which they are familiar, in Web application development； and also they can convert their Windows applications into Web applications without major modifications. ASP.NETs improved state maintenance features
20、enable us to provide users with Web applications that are richer and faster than Classis ASP (Olges,2002). ASP.NET supports advanced session state management. There are two major problems with session management in Classic ASP: session objects are stored in the Web server memory and session IDs are
21、stored on the client computers as cookies. These prevent session management from being efficiently implemented. ASP.NET solves these problems in two ways: it provides a “cookieless” option for session objects so that a session ID can be passed via URL； it provides three different session modes (in process, state server, and SQL Server), so that a session object can either be stored on the Web server, a remote server or a database. 3. THE MOTIVATIONS FOR MOVING 3.1. The industry motivation Ive checked almost all the industry projects in our school for three semesters on
