This article is for all software developers who just love to keep themselves updated with the latest in technology--it takes a comprehensive look at the latest development in the world of Microsoft's.NET.

If you are committed software developer, you must be aware that ‘web services' is the latest buzzword to have hit the IT industry. And that this technology trend holds tremendous potential for addressing business problems.

Extensible markup language (XML) is the universal format for data on the web. With XML web services gaining momentum among developers as the next generation of internet-based computing. A platform that made it similar to build these solutions and provide a reliable framework for integration and interoperability was needed. Microsoft's answer to this much-felt need was .NET—a platform for building, deploying, operating and integrating XML web services.

.NET is the only platform that has been built to support XML services ground up, and Microsoft has been extensively working with the industry to develop standard s like SOAP and UDDI, the XML web services search directory that exits today.

Let's now take a detailed look at all that Microsoft's .NET has to offer software developers by the analyzing the latest developments that have taken place in this platform.

ASP.NET is more than the next version of active server pages (APS) -- it is the unified web development platform that provides the services necessary for developers to build enterprise-class web applications.ASP.NET is a compiled, .NET -based environment; you can author applications in any.NET compatible language, including ASP.NET Visual Basic .NET, C#, and the jscript.NET. Additionally, the entire .NET framework is available to any ASP.NET application.

Developers can choose from one of two features when creating an ASP.NET application, web services, or combine these in any way they see fit.

Web forms to allow you to build powerful forms-based web pages. When building these pages, you can use ASP.NET server controls to create common UI elements, and programs then from common tasks.

These controls to allow you to rapidly build a web form out of reusable built-in or custom components, simplifying the code of a page.

An XML web service provides the means to access server functionality remotely. Using web services, interfaces to their data or business logic, which is turn can be obtained and manipulated by client and server applications. XML web services enable the exchange of data in client-server or server- server scenarios, using standards like HTTP and XML messaging to move data across firewalls.

Each of these models can take full advantage of all ASP.NET framework and.NET framework common language runtime. These features and how you can use them are outlined as follow:

• If you have ASP development skills, the new ASP.NET programming model will seem very familiar to you. However, the ASP.NET object model has changed significantly from ASP, making it move structured and object oriented.

Accessing database from ASP.NET application is an often-used technique for displaying data to website visitors. ASP.NET makes it easier then ever to access database for this purpose.

• ASP.NET provides a simple model that enables developers to write logic that runs at the application level. Developers can write this code in the global. Asax text files or in a compiled class deployed as an assembly.
• ASP.NET provides easy-to-use application and session-state-facilities that are familiar to ASP developers and readily compatible with all other .NET framework APIs.
• For advanced developers who wants to use APIs as powerful as the ISPI programming interfaces that were included with previous version of ASP, ASP.NET offer the IHttpHandler interfaces.
• ASP.NET takes advantage of performance enhancements found in the .NET framework and common language runtime.
• The. NET framework and ASP.NET provide default authorization and authentication schemes for web application.
• ASP.NET configuration setting are stored in XML-based files, which are human readable and writable.
   

Pawan Bangar
Director birbals group India