Programming Microsoft® ASP.NET 3.5

Chapter 3. Anatomy of an ASP.NET Page

ASP.NET pages are dynamically compiled on demand when first required in the context of a Web application. Dynamic compilation is not specific to ASP.NET pages (.aspx files); it also occurs with .NET Web Services (.asmx files), Web user controls (.ascx files), HTTP handlers (.ashx files), and a few more ASP.NET application files such as the global.asax file. A pipeline of run-time modules takes care of the incoming HTTP packet and makes it evolve from a simple protocol-specific payload up to the rank of a server-side ASP.NET object—precisely, an instance of a class derived from the system's Page class. The ASP.NET HTTP runtime processes the page object and causes it to generate the markup to insert in the response. ...