ASP.NET 3.5 For Dummies®

1.2. Meeting the Technologies behind Web Applications

The technologies that support Web applications come from different organizations and from different teams within Microsoft. Here's an overview of the parts that plug into — or on top of — each other.

1.2.1. Microsoft's .NET 3.5 Framework

The .NET Framework is the base of what geeks call the stack.

You can think of the stack as a multilayered wedding cake where layers depend on the layer below for support. The .NET Framework (technically, a compiled portion called the Common Language Runtime, or CLR) sits at the bottom, and its code talks to the underlying operating system, such as Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista. ASP.NET 3.5 depends on the .NET 3.5 Framework. (See the next section for more on this framework.)

You hear geeks refer to classes or class libraries that make up the .NET Framework. They use dot-filled names like System.Web, System.Data, and System.Xml.Linq. This dotty stuff is just a way to organize and categorize thousands of chunks of prewritten code that programmers can tap into via programming languages, such as C#, C++, and Visual Basic.

Microsoft provides tons of reference documentation on everything that's in the .NET Framework. If you still don't find what you need, you can peek into its source code to see how Microsoft makes it all work.

1.2.2. ASP.NET 3.5

ASP.NET 3.5 is a technology to deliver interactive, data-driven Web applications over the Internet and intranets. ASP.NET includes a large number ...