Build Your Own ASP.NET 2.0 Web Site Using C# & VB, Second Edition

Preface

Web development is very exciting. There’s nothing like the feeling you have after

you place your first dynamic web site online, and see your little toy in action

while other people are actually using it!

Web development with ASP.NET is particularly exciting. If you’ve never created

a dynamic web site before, I’m sure you’ll fall in love with this area of web devel-

opment. If you’ve worked with other server-side technologies, I expect you’ll be

a little shocked by the differences.

ASP.NET really is a unique technology, and it provides new and extremely effi-

cient ways to create web applications using the programming language with which

you feel most comfortable. Though it can take some time to learn, ASP.NET is

simple to use. Whether you want to create simple web forms, or feature-rich

shopping carts, or even complex enterprise applications, ASP.NET can help you

do it. All the tools you’ll need to get up and running are immediately available

and easy to install, and require very little initial configuration.

This book will be your gentle introduction to the wonderful world of ASP.NET,

teaching you the foundations step by step. First, you’ll learn the theory; then,

you’ll put it in practice as we work through practical exercises together. To

demonstrate some of the more complex functionality, and to put the theory into

a cohesive, realistic context, we’ll develop a project through the course of this

book. The project—an intranet site for a company named Dorknozzle—will allow

us to see the many components of .NET in action, and to understand through

practice exactly how .NET works in the real world.

We hope you’ll find reading this book an enjoyable experience that will signific-

antly help you with your future web development projects!

Who Should Read this Book?

This book is aimed at beginner, intermediate, and advanced web designers looking

to make the leap into server-side programming with ASP.NET. We expect that

you’ll already feel comfortable with HTML and a little CSS, as very little explan-

ation of these topics is provided here.

By the end of this book, you should be able to successfully download and install

ASP.NET and the .NET Framework, configure and start your web server, create

and work with basic ASP.NET pages, install and run SQL Server 2005, create

database tables, and work with advanced, dynamic ASP.NET pages that query,

insert, update, and delete information within a database.

All examples provided in the book are written in both Visual Basic and C#, the

two most popular languages for creating ASP.NET web sites. The examples start

at beginners’ level and proceed to more advanced levels. As such, no prior

knowledge of either language is required in order to read, understand, learn from,

and apply the knowledge provided in this book. Experience with other program-

ming or scripting languages (such as JavaScript) will certainly grease the wheels,

though, and should enable you to grasp fundamental programming concepts more

quickly.

What’s in this Book?

This book comprises the following chapters. Read them from beginning to end

to gain a complete understanding of the subject, or skip around if you feel you

need a refresher on a particular topic.

Chapter 1: Introducing ASP.NET

Before you can start building your database-driven web presence, you must

ensure that you have the right tools for the job. In this first chapter, you’ll

learn how to find, download, and configure the .NET Framework. You’ll learn

where the web server is located, and how to install and configure it. Next,

we’ll walk through the installation of the Microsoft database solution: SQL

Server 2005. Finally, we’ll create a simple ASP.NET page to make sure that

everything’s running and properly configured.

Chapter 2: ASP.NET Basics

In this chapter, you’ll create your first useful ASP.NET page. We’ll explore

all of the components that make up a typical ASP.NET page, including dir-

ectives, controls, and code. Then, we’ll walk through the process of deploy-

ment, focusing specifically on allowing the user to view the processing of a

simple ASP.NET page through a web browser.

Chapter 3: VB and C# Programming Basics

In this chapter, we’ll look at two of the programming languages that are used

to create ASP.NET pages: VB and C#. You’ll learn about the syntax of the

two languages as we explore the concepts of variables, data types, conditionals,

loops, arrays, functions, and more. Finally, we’ll see how the two languages

accommodate Object Oriented Programming principles by allowing you to

work with classes, methods, properties, inheritance, and so on.

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Preface