Professional ASP.NET 3.5 Security, Membership, and Role Management with C# and VB

3.3. The Unified Processing Pipeline

In the new unified integrated mode of execution, both native and managed modules get the chance to subscribe to the same events during the request-processing pipeline. The different stages of execution are exposed to all the managed modules and hence, the new integrated mode can make heavy use of the modules developed by ASP.NET.

A request in IIS 7.0 integrated mode passes through the same set of events as that of the ASP.NET pipeline events. As you know, the new integrated mode leverages ASP.NET to a framework to extend IIS 7.0 and hence, the ASP.NET pipeline will play a very important role from now on. Requests would pass through the same old ASP.NET pipeline events, both native and managed modules would subscribe to these events and hence, the expanded use of ASP.NET powers.

And now for a brief interlude to review the processing pipeline in ASP.NET 3.5: A basic understanding of the pipeline is useful for knowing when authentication and authorization occur within the lifecycle of the integrated request-processing pipeline.

Developers who have worked with the ASP.NET pipeline are usually familiar with the synchronous events that can be hooked. ASP.NET 3.5 expands on the original pipeline provided by ASP.NET 2.0 by adding three new events, which will be discussed shortly.

The current ASP.NET 3.5 synchronous pipeline events are listed in the order that they occur as follows:

1. BeginRequest

2. AuthenticateRequest

3. PostAuthenticateRequest

4. AuthorizeRequest ...