ASP.Net Web Developer Guide |
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Sitemap : Content in Chapter 1 |
Content in Chapter 2 |
Content in Chapter 3 |
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Friday, January 13, 2006
Question why we use ASP.net (Chapter 1)
Why ASP Was Needed
Not all Web developers have the programming skills needed to write ISAPI applications, and because ISAPI requires the compilation of programs, there are extra steps in producing an ISAPI-based site that slow development down. Novice and intermediate programmers found the need to learn an industrialstrength language, such as C++, and compile even the simplest of their page logic into .dll files a real barrier.
Visual Basic programs, although easier to develop, when used for CGI, performed poorly and the overhead hogged resources. Other languages such as Perl require the Web server to launch a separate command-line program to interpret and execute the requested scripts, increasing page-load time and reducing server performance. CGI itself hogs resources because every page request forces the Web servers to launch and kill new processes and communicate across these processes.
This is time consuming and also uses up precious RAM. Another problem facing development teams in the mid ‘90s was the fact that a Web site is a mixture of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and logic.They needed a way to mix the programmer’s code with the designer’s page-layout HTML and designs without one messing up the other.There were many solutions to this problem, ranging from custom template systems to Sever Side Include (SSI) statements that told the server to execute code based on special HTML comment tags.
Database-driven interactivity was another challenge.The demand for complex Web sites had just kicked off, and developers needed to supply that demand in a manageable fashion, but the tools available did not make this an easy task.Those who could achieve it demanded rewards that matched the difficulty of what they were being asked to do. What was needed was a solution for the rest of us. It needed to be a simple scripted text-based technology like Perl, so developers could tweak and alter their pages without compilation and with simple text-editing tools such as Notepad. It needed to have low resource requirements while keeping high performance;
therefore it needed to be executed within the server environment just like ISAPI, but without the complexity. Designers and cross-discipline teams demanded that it should include SSI and template features to make integrating page layouts simpler to manage.To be truly popular, it should run off a language that would be easy to pick up and was familiar to a large community of developers. Enter Active Server Pages!
Why ASP Was Not Originally Embraced
Active Server Pages was not an overnight success, though understandably it did capture the imagination of a large sector of the development community, particularly those already well versed in Visual Basic programming or Visual Basic for applications scripting.
Others who did not have an investment in Visual Basic knowledge found the limitations of Visual Basic, and by extension Visual Basic Scripting, reasons to avoid the technology. Faults included poor memory management, the lack of strong string management abilities, such as Regular Expressions, found in other established languages.When compared to CGI with Perl,ASP was found lacking. At that time, Internet Information Server was in its infancy, and take-up was low, despite Microsoft’s public relations juggernaut going into full flow after the company’s much-reported dramatic turnaround. In comparison to current versions of the software it seems very poor, but it was still competitive on performance.
Until 1997, back-end Web programming was pretty much owned by CGI and Perl. High-performance Web sites usually had a mix of C-compiled programs for the real business engine, and Perl for the more lightweight form processing.
There was a fair amount of doubt and suspicion around Microsoft’s Internet efforts, including IIS and Internet Explorer, and ISAPI had not done all that much to bring across a huge sector of the development community. Despite this uncertain atmosphere, Microsoft saw many Windows NT 4 licenses being bought specifically for Web hosting and development increasing.Third-party support for anything other than small components was initially slow, but, as with all Microsoft products, after the first couple of releases they usually get things right, and ASP was no exception.
Whereas Perl had a huge community of developers led by the heroic figure of Larry Wall, the ASP developer was not yet well supported.A Perl programmer was encouraged from the top to share and make his or her code open, so the community thrived, with every conceivable solution or library just a few clicks away at the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) site, or at one of the many other Web sites and news groups. Contrast this with the ingrained competitive and financially led philosophies of the third-party component vendors in the Windows Distributed Internet Applications (DNA) world. Of course, it did not take the ASP community long to grow to be the loving, sharing success it is now.
Not all Web developers have the programming skills needed to write ISAPI applications, and because ISAPI requires the compilation of programs, there are extra steps in producing an ISAPI-based site that slow development down. Novice and intermediate programmers found the need to learn an industrialstrength language, such as C++, and compile even the simplest of their page logic into .dll files a real barrier.
Visual Basic programs, although easier to develop, when used for CGI, performed poorly and the overhead hogged resources. Other languages such as Perl require the Web server to launch a separate command-line program to interpret and execute the requested scripts, increasing page-load time and reducing server performance. CGI itself hogs resources because every page request forces the Web servers to launch and kill new processes and communicate across these processes.
This is time consuming and also uses up precious RAM. Another problem facing development teams in the mid ‘90s was the fact that a Web site is a mixture of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and logic.They needed a way to mix the programmer’s code with the designer’s page-layout HTML and designs without one messing up the other.There were many solutions to this problem, ranging from custom template systems to Sever Side Include (SSI) statements that told the server to execute code based on special HTML comment tags.
Database-driven interactivity was another challenge.The demand for complex Web sites had just kicked off, and developers needed to supply that demand in a manageable fashion, but the tools available did not make this an easy task.Those who could achieve it demanded rewards that matched the difficulty of what they were being asked to do. What was needed was a solution for the rest of us. It needed to be a simple scripted text-based technology like Perl, so developers could tweak and alter their pages without compilation and with simple text-editing tools such as Notepad. It needed to have low resource requirements while keeping high performance;
therefore it needed to be executed within the server environment just like ISAPI, but without the complexity. Designers and cross-discipline teams demanded that it should include SSI and template features to make integrating page layouts simpler to manage.To be truly popular, it should run off a language that would be easy to pick up and was familiar to a large community of developers. Enter Active Server Pages!
Why ASP Was Not Originally Embraced
Active Server Pages was not an overnight success, though understandably it did capture the imagination of a large sector of the development community, particularly those already well versed in Visual Basic programming or Visual Basic for applications scripting.
Others who did not have an investment in Visual Basic knowledge found the limitations of Visual Basic, and by extension Visual Basic Scripting, reasons to avoid the technology. Faults included poor memory management, the lack of strong string management abilities, such as Regular Expressions, found in other established languages.When compared to CGI with Perl,ASP was found lacking. At that time, Internet Information Server was in its infancy, and take-up was low, despite Microsoft’s public relations juggernaut going into full flow after the company’s much-reported dramatic turnaround. In comparison to current versions of the software it seems very poor, but it was still competitive on performance.
Until 1997, back-end Web programming was pretty much owned by CGI and Perl. High-performance Web sites usually had a mix of C-compiled programs for the real business engine, and Perl for the more lightweight form processing.
There was a fair amount of doubt and suspicion around Microsoft’s Internet efforts, including IIS and Internet Explorer, and ISAPI had not done all that much to bring across a huge sector of the development community. Despite this uncertain atmosphere, Microsoft saw many Windows NT 4 licenses being bought specifically for Web hosting and development increasing.Third-party support for anything other than small components was initially slow, but, as with all Microsoft products, after the first couple of releases they usually get things right, and ASP was no exception.
Whereas Perl had a huge community of developers led by the heroic figure of Larry Wall, the ASP developer was not yet well supported.A Perl programmer was encouraged from the top to share and make his or her code open, so the community thrived, with every conceivable solution or library just a few clicks away at the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) site, or at one of the many other Web sites and news groups. Contrast this with the ingrained competitive and financially led philosophies of the third-party component vendors in the Windows Distributed Internet Applications (DNA) world. Of course, it did not take the ASP community long to grow to be the loving, sharing success it is now.
posted by Mr.Q at 12:02 AM
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