Programming Microsoft® ASP.NET 4

Chapter 5. Anatomy of an ASP.NET Page

The wise are instructed by reason; ordinary minds by experience; the stupid, by necessity; and brutes by instinct.

— Cicero

ASP.NET pages are dynamically compiled on demand when first requested in the context of a Web application. Dynamic compilation is not specific to ASP.NET pages alone (.aspx files); it also occurs with services (.svc and 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—whether it’s an instance of a class derived from ...