ASP.NET, a higher version of ASP, is a programming framework used to create enterprise-class Web Applications. These applications are available to the entire world providing efficient information to their end users. ASP .NET has far more advantages than just a next version of ASP. And it is easily available to configure and use no matter if you have a Dedicated server or a Shared hosting account.

Why to use ASP.NET?

Microsoft has worked well to shift their focus on Internet world from a Windows based platform since 1995 and finally Microsoft introduced Active Server Pages (ASP) in 1996 that was much easy to understand than the orthodox languages like Java, C++ and Perl as it offered the efficiency of ISAPI applications. However ASP scripts were difficult to debug and main, since it consisted unstructured code and interpreted script. ASP also made it difficult for developer to ingrate the web development software as it required to understand many different technologies. If the web application grew more complex and bigger it became harder to maintain as the number of line in source code increased dramatically, specially when you host your application on a Shared hosting server. Therefore, a need of an architecture was required that would allow development of Web application in a consistent way.

A new technology .NET framework was introduced with the intention to provide globally distributed software with Internet functionality and interoperability. The .NET Framework includes multiple language support and consists of many class libraries with a common execution point. .NET framework provides a high level of flexibility allowing to development a top class web application that does different things. ASP .NET is built into this framework which allows a developer to crate a web application using any of the built-in languages. Making it easy to develop an Internet based web application.

ASP.NET uses the Common Language Runtime (CLR) provided by the .NET Framework which is not available in ASP. Execution of the code we rite is managed by this CLR. ASP.NET code is a compiled CLR code instead of interpreted code (ASP). The CLR makes development of Web applications simple and also allows objects written in different languages to interact with each other.

Advantages of Using ASP.NET:

• ASP.NET reduces the code drastically that is required to build large applications
• ASP.NET makes for easy deployment. There is no need to register components because the configuration information is built-in
• ASP.NET, with an event-driven, server-side programming model makes development simpler and easier to maintain.
• The pages have lots of power and flexibility by this approach since the source code is executed on the server.
• The Web server continuously monitors the pages, components and applications running on it. If it notices memory leaks, infinite loops, other illegal software or activities, it seamlessly kills those activities and restarts itself
• Execution of .NET application is fast as the Web Server compiles the page the first time it is requested. The server saves the compiled version of the page to use it next time the page is requested
• ASP.NET applications are more secure as only the HTML produced by the ASP .NET page is sent back to the browser and the application source code you write is not sent and is not easily stolen
• ASP.NET pages are easy to write and maintain because the source code and HTML are together
• ASP.NET applications run faster and counters large volumes of users without performance problems
• ASP .NET validates information (validation controls) entered by the user without writing a single line of code
• ASP.NET is compatible with ADO.NET using data-binding and page formatting features.