Wiley Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Databases
Contents
1. Introduction to ASP NET 2 0 With the release of ASP NET 1 0 Microsoft revolutionized web application development by pro viding a rich set of features aimed at increasing the productivity of developers Now with ASP NET 2 0 Microsoft has raised the bar to a much higher level by providing excellent out of the box features that are not only geared toward increasing the productivity of developers but also toward simplifying the administration and management of ASP NET 2 0 applications These new features combined with the increased speed and performance of ASP NET 2 0 arm developers with a powerful platform that can make a significant impact on the way web applications are developed deployed and maintained This chapter takes a quick tour of the new ASP NET 2 0 features Specifically this chapter will dis cuss the features of this new improved platform that will help you in designing developing and deploying enterprise class web applications ASP NET 2 0 Features If you have worked with ASP NET 1 x versions you will undoubtedly agree that it was a great prod uct that provided huge improvements in the way web applications were designed and deployed If ASP NET 1 x was a great product then what s wrong with it Well nothing actually but when devel oping software there is always a trade off between how much can be done how many resources you have and how much time you have to do it There is an almost never ending supply of featur2. 1 Create a folder called ControlThemes under the App_Themes folder 2 Create a file with the extension skin and add all the controls that you want to use in a page and their style properties Or you can also create individual skin files for each and every control When you are defining skin files remember to remove the ID attribute from all of the controls declara tions For example you can use the following code to define the theme for a Button control lt asp Button runat server BackColor Black ForeColor White Font Name Arial Font Size 10px gt 3 Name the skin file Button skin and place it under the ControlThemes folder Once you have created the skin file you can then apply that theme to all the pages in your application by using appropriate settings in the Web config file To apply the theme to a specific page all you need to do is to add the Theme attribute to the Page directive as shown below lt Page Theme ControlThemes gt That s all there is to creating a theme and utilizing it in an ASP NET page It is also possible for you to programmatically access the theme associated with a specific page using the Page Theme property Similarly you can also set the SkinID property of any of the controls to specify the skin If the theme does not contain a SkinID value for the control type then no error is thrown and the control simply defaults to its own properties For dynamic controls it is possible to set
3. as TreeView Menu and so on Chapter 1 Introduction to ASPNET 2 0 Now that you have had a look at the data source controls supplied with ASP NET 2 0 this section will examine the data bound controls that you will normally use to display data that is contained in the data source controls These data bound controls bind data automatically One of the neat things about data bound controls is that the development environment automatically guides developers through the process of binding a data control to a data source Developers are prompted to select the particular data source to use for selecting inserting updating and deleting data The feature that walks the developers through this process is called Smart Tasks This is explained in detail in the Visual Studio 2005 Improvements section later in this chapter The DataGrid is one of the most popular data bound controls in ASP NET but in some ways it is a vic tim of its own success It is so rich in functionality that it leaves ASP NET developers wanting even more The DataGrid control does not change much in ASP NET 2 0 but the new GridView control offers fea tures commonly requested in DataGrid and adds a few surprises of its own In addition new controls named DetailsView and FormView simplify the building of master detail views and web editable user interfaces The new data bound controls introduced in ASP NET 2 0 are lt asp GridView gt This control is the successor to t
4. common look and feel and standard behavior for all the pages in your application Once the common content is placed in the master page the content pages child pages can inherit content from the master pages apart from adding their content to the final output To allow the content page to add its own content you add placeholders known as Content PlaceHolder control in the master page that will be utilized by the content pages to add their custom content When users request the content pages the output of the content pages are merged with the output of the master page resulting in an output that combines the layout of the master page with the output of the content page In ASP NET 1 x you could achieve similar effects by creating user controls that abstract the common look and behavior of all the pages in the application and then declaring the user control in each and every page Even though this approach was useful it required a lot of cutting and pasting of code across all the pages in a web application Master pages take this approach of reusable user controls to the next level by providing a much cleaner approach to reusing a common look and feel across all the pages Master pages are saved with the file extension master Apart from containing all the contents that are required for defining the standard look and feel of the application the master pages also contain all the top level HTML elements for a page such as lt html gt l
5. gt lt body gt lt form id form1 runat server gt The random number generated is lt asp Substitution ID Substitution1 MethodName GetRandomNumber Runat Server gt lt p gt The current time is lt DateTime Now ToString t gt It never changes since the page is cached lt p gt lt form gt lt body gt lt html gt At the top of the page the OutputCache directive is used to cache the contents of the page in memory The Duration attribute of the OutputCache directive is set to 6000 milliseconds The varyByParam attribute indicates whether or not ASP NET should consider the parameters passed to the page when caching When VaryByParan is set to none no parameters will be considered all users will receive the same page no matter what additional parameters are supplied The MethodName attribute of the Substitution control is set to a method named GetRandomNumber which simply returns a random number between 1 and 10 000 Note that the return value of the GetRandomNumber method is a string because the HttpResponseSubstitutionCallback delegate always requires a return type of string When you make a request for the page through the browser you will find that the displayed current time always remains the same whereas the portion of the page that is generated by the substitution con trol keeps changing every time In this case it displays a random number between 1 and 10 000 every time someone requests the page Chapter
6. the SkinID property after they are created Web Parts Framework There are many times when you would want to allow the users of your web site to be able to customize the content by selecting removing and rearranging the contents in the web page Traditionally imple menting this capability required a lot of custom code or you had to depend on third party products to accomplish this To address this shortcoming ASP NET 2 0 ships with a Web Parts Framework that pro vides the infrastructure and the building blocks required for creating modular web pages that can be easily customized by the users You can use Web Parts to create portal pages that aggregate different types of content such as static text links and content that can change at runtime It is also possible for the users to change the layout of the Web Parts by dragging and dropping them from one place to another providing a rich user experience Web Parts are reusable pieces of code that allow you to logically group related func tionality together into one unit Once the Web Parts are added to an ASP NET page they can then be shown hidden moved around and redesigned all by the user 13 Part Introduction By taking advantage of Web Parts you as a developer can empower your users with the ability to perform the following operations Q Users can personalize page content Q Users can personalize the page layout by allowing the users to drag Web Parts from one
7. user Q lt asp LoginStatus gt Displays whether the user is authenticated or not 10 Chapter 1 Introduction to ASPNET 2 0 lt asp LoginView gt Provides various login views depending on the selected template Qh lt asp PasswordRecovery gt Provides the web site administrators with the capability to email the users their lost password The login controls described here abstract most of the common tasks for which developers have to man ually write code for a secured web site Although this could be achieved in ASP NET 1 x you still had to add controls manually and write code Apart from providing the user interface ASP NET 2 0 also pro vides the capability to retrieve and validate user information using Membership functionality To this end ASP NET ships with a new Membership API the aim of which is to abstract the required member ship functionality from the storage of the member information Other New Controls In addition to the new controls ASP NET 2 0 also provides numerous enhancements to existing controls that make these controls more versatile than ever before in building component based web pages For example the Panel control now has a DefaultButton property that specifies which button should be clicked if the user presses the Enter key while the panel has the focus There is also a new Wizard control which simplifies the task of building web UIs that step users through sequential operations Individual steps
8. 1 Introduction to ASPNET 2 0 Summary This chapter has provided you with a quick tour of the features of ASP NET 2 0 Specifically this chapter discussed the number of new productivity enhancements of ASP NET 2 0 that are exciting for the devel opers In addition this chapter has also discussed the configuration and management of ASP NET web applications as well as the performance improvement features Apart from the features discussed so far ASP NET 2 0 also provides the following features ASP NET 2 0 is 64 bit enabled Q ASP NET 2 0 is almost completely backward compatible with ASP NET 1 0 and ASP NET 1 1 You can also define a single class in multiple files and at runtime they will be compiled together to create a single assembly Now that you have had a quick tour of ASP NET 2 0 the next chapter focuses on the features of ADO NET 2 0 23
9. 1 0 and ASP NET Mobile Controls in version 1 1 provided this support including separate controls for building web pages suitable for small screen browsers In ASP NET 2 0 the MMIT is no longer required because mobile support is built into all controls This reduces the amount of code required as well as the need for specialist knowledge about mobile platforms Q Provide the best hosting solution With the large number of Internet applications being hosted it s important to provide better solutions for hosters For example better management features to identify and stop rogue applications will give hosters more control over their current envi ronment More control can also be given to hosted companies by use of the new web based administration tool allowing users to easily control the configuration of applications remotely Q Provide easier and more sophisticated management features Administration of ASP NET appli cations under version 1 x required manual editing of the XML configuration file which is not a great solution for administrators Version 2 0 brings a graphical user interface based administra tion tool that is integrated with the Internet Information Services IIS administration tool Q Easy implementation of entire scenarios The better management features are built on top of a management application programming interface API allowing custom administration pro grams to be created Along with application packaging this will p
10. Windows Authentication for the web site through IIS Manager and ensure that SQL Server 2005 Express is installed with Windows authentication enabled Now run the page and you will see the output shown in Figure 1 2 Example of a GenericWebPart Microsoft Internet Explorer Sie File Edit View Favorites Tools Help 7 2 P sech Favortes ye wl Pel Address 2 http locahost MyProjects Wrox Chapker1 3_GenericWebartExample aspx Go Links Generic WebPart a i Minimize GenericWebPart that uses a label control to generate the contents of the Web Pa a Close J F Dore 3 Local intranet Figure 1 2 In Figure 1 2 you can choose to minimize or close the Web Part by clicking on the corresponding links Personalization Framework There are times when you want to store and present information that is unique to a specific user For instance when a user visits your site you can collect information from the user about his preferences such as color scheme styles and so forth Once you have that information you can use it to present the user with a personalized version of your web application To implement this with ASP NET 1 x you had to go through the following steps Store user information with a unique user identifier used to identify the user when he visits again 2 Fetch the user information as needed 3 Finally present the user with the personalized content 15 Part Introductio
11. are defined by Wizardstep controls The Wizard con trol serves as a container for WizardStep and provides a default interface for stepping backward and forward It is also capable of displaying a list of steps enabling users to randomly navigate between them and it fires events that can be used to programmatically control step ordering A simple Wizard control declaration is lt asp Wizard ID Wizard1l runat server gt lt WizardSteps gt lt asp WizardStep ID WizardStep1 runat server Title Step 1 gt Wizard Step 1 lt asp WizardStep gt lt asp WizardStep ID WizardStep2 runat server Title Step 2 StepType Complete gt Wizard Step 2 lt asp WizardStep gt lt WizardSteps gt lt asp Wizard gt Another interesting and potentially very useful control debuting in ASP NET 2 0 is the MultiView con trol Paired with View controls MultiView controls can be used to create pages containing multiple logi cal views Only one view the one whose index is assigned to the MultiView control s ActiveViewIndex property is displayed at a time but you can switch views by changing the active view index Validation Groups In ASP NET 1 x you would assign validation controls to input controls such as text boxes password fields radio buttons and check boxes and the validation controls would automatically validate the data entered by an end user to input controls With ASP NET 2 0 Microsoft introduces a new feature known as validati
12. data for two minutes Using SQL Cache Invalidation The Cache API introduced with ASP NET 1 x was a powerful feature that can be immensely useful in increasing the performance of a web application The Cache API also allows you to invalidate items in the cache based on some predefined conditions such as change in an XML file change in another cache item and so on Using this feature you can remove or invalidate an item from the cache when the data or another cached item changes However the Cache API in ASP NET 1 x versions did not provide a mechanism to invalidate an item in the cache when data in a SQL Server database changed This is a very common capability that many web applications require Now with ASP NET 2 0 Microsoft has introduced a new cache invalidation mechanism that works with SQL Server as well Using this new capability you can invalidate an item in the Cache object whenever the data in a SQL Server database changes This built in cache invalidation mechanism works with SQL Server 7 0 and above However with SQL Server 7 0 and 2000 only table level cache invalidation mechanism is supported The next release of SQL Server named SQL Server 2005 will also feature a row level cache invalidation mecha nism providing a finer level of accuracy over the cached data To enable the SQL Server based cache invalidation mechanism you need to do the following 1 Adda lt caching gt element to the Web config file and specify the polli
13. deployment use the same aspnet_compiler utility and specify the target path as an additional argument aspnet_compiler v myprojects wrox chapterl C Chapter1 Output This type of precompilation enables applications to be deployed without any source being stored on the server even the content of aspx files is removed as part of the precompilation further protecting your intellectual property This capability can be very useful in web site host ing scenarios Speed and Performance Although ASP NET 1 x is the one of the world s fastest web application servers Microsoft aims to make it even faster by bundling the performance improvements in ASP NET 2 0 It is now 64 bit enabled meaning it can take advantage of the full memory address space of new 64 bit processors and servers Developers can simply copy existing 32 bit ASP NET applications onto a 64 bit ASP NET 2 0 server and the web applications will be automatically JIT compiled and executed as native 64 bit applications As part of the performance improvements ASP NET 2 0 also enhances the caching feature set by providing new functionalities The next section provides you with a quick overview of the caching improvements in ASP NET 2 0 Caching Feature Caching is defined as temporary storage of data for faster retrieval on subsequent requests In ASP NET 2 0 the caching support is integrated with the DataSource controls to cache data in a web page ASP NET 2 0 also now includes au
14. e code as follows lt page language c MasterPageFile CommonPage master gt lt asp Content id Content1 ContentPlaceHolderID MiddleContent runat server gt Child Page Content lt asp Content gt The code required for the content page is very simple and straightforward As part of the page directive specify a new attribute named MasterPageFile that is used to identify the name of the master page that you want to utilize This example uses the master page created in Listing 1 1 Next you have a new element named asp Content that is used to associate the asp Content PlaceHolder element in the master page with the content page This is done through the use of the Content PlaceHolderID attribute That s all that is there to creating a master page and using the master page from a content page Now if you request the content page from a browser you will get the output that is produced by merging the master page with the content page New Code Behind Model in ASPNET 2 0 ASP NET 1 x supports two coding models the inline model in which markup and code coexist in the same ASPX file and the code behind model which places markup in ASPX files and code in source code files ASP NET 2 0 introduces a third model a new form of code behind that relies on the new partial classes support in the Visual C and Visual Basic compilers Code behind in ASP NET 2 0 fixes a nagging problem with version 1 x the requirement that code behind clas
15. een the Design View and Source View of the page This is one of the important features that developers have been clamoring for in the previous versions of Visual Studio Chapter 1 Introduction to ASPNET 2 0 Tag Navigator Visual Studio 2005 comes with a new Tag Navigator feature that enables developers to easily track their location in a HTML document thereby providing excellent navigation support The Tag Navigator dis plays the current path within the source of an HTML page by displaying a list of all the HTML tags that contain the tag where your cursor is currently located Clicking on any of the nodes enables developers to optionally change the source level selection and quickly move up and down a deep HTML hierarchy This feature can be very handy especially when you are editing multiple nested HTML elements For example when you are editing multiple nested HTML tables it is very easy to get lost and you can leverage Tag Navigator to easily identify the current path within the hierarchy of table elements Targeting Specific Browsers and HTML Validation Using Visual Studio 2005 you can easily target a specific HTML standard or browser when writing your HTML pages For example you can target your HTML pages to work with a particular browser such as Internet Explorer 5 0 or Netscape Navigator 4 0 Alternatively you can target a particular HTML stan dard such as XHTML 1 0 Strict or XHTML 1 0 Transitional As you type your HTML in the so
16. es you can add but at some stage you have to ship the product You cannot doubt that ASP NET 1 0 shipped with an impressive array of features but the ASP NET team members are ambitious and they not only had plans of their own but also listened to their users ASP NET 2 0 addresses the areas that both the development team and users wanted to improve The aims of the new version are Q Reduce the number of lines of code required by 70 The declarative programming model freed developers from having to write reams of code but there are still many sce narios where this cannot be avoided Data access is a great example where the same Connection DataAdapter DataSet and Command DataReader code is used regularly Part Introduction Qs Increase developer productivity This partly relates to reducing the amount of code required but is also affected by more server controls encompassing complex functionality as well as pro viding better solutions for common web site scenarios such as portals and personalized sites Q Provide the fastest web server platform Although ASP NET 1 x offered a fast server platform ASP NET 2 0 will improve areas such as application start up times and provide better applica tion tracing and performance data Innovative caching features will enhance application perfor mance especially when SQL Server is used Q Support for mobile development In ASP NET 1 0 the Microsoft Mobile Internet Toolkit MMIT in version
17. ference between the two controls is their appearance Listing 1 2 shows you an example of how to use the combination of Sq1DataSource and GridView con trols to retrieve and display data from the ProductCategory table in the AdventureWorks database with out even having a single line of code Listing 1 2 Using the SqiDataSource Control to Retrieve Categories Information lt page language C gt lt html gt lt head id Head1 runat server gt lt title gt Data Binding using SqlDataSource control lt title gt lt head gt continued 9 Part Introduction Listing 1 2 continued lt body gt lt form id Form1l runat server gt lt asp SqlDataSource id categorySource runat server ConnectionString server localhost database AdventureWorks uid user pwd word SelectCommand SELECT From Production ProductCategory gt lt asp SqlDataSource gt lt asp GridView DataSourceID categorySource runat server id gridCategories gt lt asp GridView gt lt form gt lt body gt lt html gt The code declares a Sq1DataSource control and a GridView control The SqlDataSource control dec laration also specifies the connection string and the SQL statement to be executed as attributes The DataSourcelID attribute in the GridView is the one that links the Sq1DataSource control to the GridView control That s all there is to retrieving the data from the database and displaying it in a web page Figu
18. he DataGrid control that was part of ASP NET 1 x and is used to display multiple records in a web page However the GridView also enables you to add update and delete a record in a database without writing a single line of code Similarly to the DataGrid control in a GridView control each column represents a field while each row represents a record As you would expect you can bind a GridView con trol to a Sq1DataSource control as well as to any data source control as long as that control implements the System Collections IEnumerab e interface lt asp DetailsView gt Can be used in conjunction with the Gridview control to display a spe cific record in the data source Ql lt asp FormView gt Provides a user interface to display and modify the data stored in a database The FormView control provides different templates such as ItemTemplate and EditItemTemplate that you can use to view and modify the database records Qo lt asp TreeView gt Provides a seamless way to consume information from hierarchical data sources such as an XML file and then display that information You can use the TreeView con trol to display information from a wide variety of data sources such as an XML file a sitemap file a string or a database lt asp Menu gt Like the TreeView control the Menu control can be used to display hierarchical data You can use the Menu control to display static data sitemap data and database data The main dif
19. ications without requiring Administrator access Note that the built in web server cannot be accessed remotely and it automatically shuts down when you close the Visual Studio 2005 development environment Q Local IIS Support In addition to file system projects Visual Studio 2005 now enables you to more easily manage projects that are hosted on an IIS web server When you create a new IIS project you can now view all of the web sites and applications configured on your machine You can even create new IIS web applications or virtual directories directly from the New Web Site dialog box Figure 1 3 shows an example of this in action FrontPage Server Extensions FPSE is no longer required for locally developed IIS web applications Q FIP Support Visual Studio 2005 now has out of the box support for editing and updating remote web projects using the standard File Transfer Protocol FTP The New Web Site and Open Web Site dialog boxes allow you to quickly connect to a remote web site using FTP Administration and Management One of the key goals of ASP NET 2 0 is to ease the effort required to deploy manage and operate ASP NET web sites To this end ASP NET 2 0 features a new Configuration Management API that 18 Chapter 1 Introduction to ASPNET 2 0 enables users to programmatically build programs or scripts that create read and update configuration files such as Web config and machine config In addition there is a new comprehensi
20. n Enables you to manage your application s configuration settings Configuration Breer Confictiration Raven to specify where and how to store administration data used by your lvoe Figure 1 4 3 Local intranet As you can see from Figure 1 4 it provides a simple web interface that allows configuration of all aspects of a site The interface is designed to be customized so corporations and hosts can give it a company look Precompilation One of the significant improvements in ASP NET 2 0 is the capability to request a web form aspx file from a browser without having to compile the code even once When the page is first requested ASP NET compiles the page on the fly dynamically generating the assembly This makes it possible for you to resort to the Just Hit Save programming model similar to ASP wherein you just develop and test the page without having to compile it After the initial compilation the compiled page is cached which is used to satisfy the subsequent requests for the same page Although this approach is flexible it does result in a performance hit especially when the page is requested for the first time since ASP NET requires a bit of extra time to compile the code You can avoid this overhead by leveraging a new feature 19 Part Introduction known as precompilation using which you can compile an ASP NET web site before making the web site available to users Precompilatio
21. n Now with the introduction of ASP NET 2 0 personalization all of the above complexities are handled by the personalization framework itself In ASP NET personalization information about a specific user is stored in a persistent format Also ASP NET personalization allows you to easily manage user informa tion without requiring you to create and maintain your own database In addition the personalization system makes the user information available using a consistent easy to use strongly typed API that you can access from anywhere in your application You can also store objects of any type in the personaliza tion system including user information user preferences or business information The personalization system uses a generic storage system for storing the data and makes that data available to the users ina type safe manner By default ASP NET 2 0 uses SQL Server as the storage mechanism Visual Studio 2005 Improvements Visual Studio 2005 is the best development tool for building data driven web applications As part of the Visual Studio 2005 suite of tools Microsoft is introducing a new tool called Visual Web Developer VWD that is designed to work with the current and next generation of ASP NET VWD provides pow erful new features for the web developer VWD is also tuned to the specific needs of the web developer through a new web profile that exposes a menu and window layout optimized for web development The environment includes a be
22. n also allows you to catch all the compilation errors before deploying the application onto the production servers ASP NET 2 0 provides the following two options for pre compiling a site Q In place precompilation When you perform in place precompilation all ASP NET files are compiled and stored in a special folder The precompilation process follows the same logic that ASP NET uses for dynamic compilation also taking into consideration the dependencies between files During precompilation the compiler creates assemblies for all executable output and places them in a special folder After the compiled output is created ASP NET fulfills requests for pages using the assemblies contained in this folder One of the important advan tages of precompilation is the ability to check the web site for compilation errors For example to precompile a web site named Chapter1 enter the following command at the NET Framework 2 0 SDK command prompt aspnet_compiler v myprojects wrox chapter1l The above command will precompile the web site and display the compilation errors in the browser if there are any Q Precompiling a site for deployment Using this option you can create a special deployable out put of your web application that can be deployed to production servers Once the output is cre ated you can deploy the output using various mechanisms such as XCOPY FTP or Windows installers onto the production servers To precompile a web site for
23. nat server gt lt asp WebPartManager id WebPartManager1l runat Server gt lt asp WebPartManager gt lt table cellspacing 0 cellpadding 0 border 0 gt ste lt td valign top gt lt asp WebPartZone id MainZone runat server headertext Main gt lt ZoneTemplate gt lt asp Label id contentPart runat server title GenericWebPart gt lt h4 gt GenericWebPart that uses a label control to generate the contents of the Web Part lt h4 gt lt asp Label gt lt ZoneTemplate gt lt asp WebPartZone gt lt td gt 14 Chapter 1 Introduction to ASPNET 2 0 SERS lt table gt lt form gt lt body gt lt html gt To start with you declare a WebPartManager control The WebPartManager control is a must for any ASP NET page that utilizes Web Parts This control must be the first element in an ASP NET web form above all other Web Parts zones or any other custom or specialized Web Part controls The WebPartManager has no visual element associated with it however it is crucial because of the required plumbing it provides for managing the interactions between Web Parts Then the code declares a WebPartZone control which in turn includes a Label control that consists of all the HTML elements that make up the display of the Web Part The WebPartZone control is the one that provides overall lay out for the Web Part controls that compose the main UI of a page Before navigating to the page using the browser enable
24. nd Sharing Reusable Components in ASP NET 2 0 Prior to ASP NET 2 0 if you were to reference a reusable component from your ASP NET application you had to compile the assembly and place it in the bin folder or place it in the GAC of the web appli cation But now with ASP NET 2 0 creating a reusable component is very simple and straightforward All you need to do is create the component in a predefined subdirectory called App_Code Any compo nent placed in this directory will be automatically compiled at runtime into a single assembly This assembly is automatically referenced and will be available to all the pages in the site Note that you should only put components in the App_Code subdirectory New ASPNET 2 0 Controls ASP NET 2 0 introduces several new controls that help create data driven web applications These con trols perform actions such as connecting to a database executing commands against the database and so on without you even having to write a single line of code ASP NET 2 0 introduces more than 40 new control types to help you build rich web UIs while insulating you from the vagaries of HTML client side script and browser DOMs The following table lists the new control types Control Category Controls Data source controls SqlDataSource ObjectDataSource Xm1DataSource Access DataSource SiteMapDataSource Data bound controls GridView DetailsView FormView TreeView Menu Table continued on following
25. ng time and the connec tion string information 2 Enable SQL cache invalidation at the database and table levels by using either the aspnet_regsq l utility or the Sql1cacheDependencyAdmin class This is not required if you are using SQL Server 2005 as your database 3 Specify the Sql1CacheDependency attribute in the Sq1DataSource control That s all you need to do to leverage SQL Server cache invalidation from your ASP NET pages 21 Part Introduction Using the Substitution Control 22 ASP NET 2 0 provides a new control called the Substitution control which enables you to insert dynamic content into a cached web page For example you can display the name of an end user which is dynamically generated in a cached web page containing some text or images The Substitution con trol provides a property called MethodName which represents the method called to return the dynamic content Listing 1 4 shows an example of the Substitution control in action Listing 1 4 Partial Page Caching Using Substitution Control lt Page Language C gt lt OutputCache Duration 6000 VaryByParam none gt lt script runat server gt static string GetRandomNumber HttpContext context int randomNumber randomNumber new System Random Next 1 10000 return randomNumber ToString lt script gt lt html gt lt head gt lt title gt Use of Substitution control to implement Partial Caching lt title gt lt head
26. not only scalable but also easier to maintain N tier principle also enables clean separation thereby allowing you to easily add new functionalities In an n tier application the middle tier objects may return complex objects that you have to process in your ASP NET presentation layer Keeping this requirement in mind Microsoft has created this new control that allows you to seamlessly integrate the data returned from the middle layer objects with the ASP NET pre sentation layer lt asp AccessDataSource gt This is very similar to the Sq1DataSource control except for the difference that it is designed to work with Access databases lt asp Xm1DataSource gt Allows you to bind to XML data which can come from a variety of sources such as an external XML file a DataSet object and so on Once the XML data is bound to the Xm1DataSource control this control can then act as a source of data for data bound con trols such as TreeView and Menu lt asp SiteMapDataSource gt Provides a site navigation framework that makes the creation of a site navigation system a breezy experience Accomplishing this requires the use of anew XML file named web sitemap that lays out the pages of the site in a hierarchical XML structure Once you have the site hierarchy in the web sitemap file you can then data bind the Sitemap DataSource control with the web sitemap file Then the contents of the SiteMapDataSource control can be bound to data aware controls such
27. ol Theme files are stored with the extension skin and all the themes for a web application are stored in the special folder named App_Themes As you read this you might be wondering if themes are another variation of CSS stylesheets Themes are not the same thing as Cascading Style Sheets Using Cascading Style Sheets you can control the appearance of HTML tags on the browser Whereas themes are applied on the server and they apply to the properties of ASP NET controls Another difference is that themes can also include external files such as images and so on The implementation of themes in ASP NET 2 0 is built around two areas skins and themes A skin is a set of properties and templates that can be applied to controls A theme is a set of skins and any other associ ated files such as images or stylesheets Skins are control specific so for a given theme there could be a separate skin for each control within that theme Any controls without a skin inherit the default look There are two types of themes Q Customization themes These types of themes are applied after the properties of the control are applied meaning that the properties of the themes override the properties of the control itself Q Stylesheet themes You can apply this type of theme to a page in exactly the same manner as a customization theme However stylesheet themes don t override control properties thus allow ing the control to use the theme prope
28. on groups which enables you to create different groups of validation controls and assign them to input controls such as text boxes You can assign a validation group to a collection of input con trols if you want to validate the collection of input controls on the same criteria For example you can assign the button control to a group of input controls and validate the data entered to each group of input controls on a criterion This feature is very handy when you have multiple forms on a single web 11 Part Introduction page For example you can create a web page that contains login and password text boxes for registered end users and another set of controls for new end users to register with the web site In this case you can use the validation group property to perform different actions such as logging on to the web site and registering an end user Themes One of the neat features of ASP NET 2 0 is themes which enable you to define the appearance of a set of controls once and apply the appearance to your entire web application For example you can utilize themes to define a common appearance for all of the CheckBox controls in your application such as the background and foreground color in one central location By leveraging themes you can easily create and maintain a consistent look throughout your web site Themes are extremely flexible in that they can be applied to an entire web application to a page or to an individual contr
29. ontrols and infrastructure services built into the core platform as opposed to writing a lot of infrastructure code as is the case with ASP NET 1 x For example ASP NET 2 0 now includes built in support for membership username password credential storage and role management services out of the box The new personalization service provides for quick storage retrieval of user settings and preferences enabling rich customization with minimal code With ASP NET 2 0 Microsoft has intro duced a new concept known as master pages that now enable flexible page user interface UI inheri tance across sites The new site navigation system enables developers to quickly build link structures consistently across a site Site counters enable rich logging and instrumentation of client browser access patterns Themes enable flexible UI skinning of controls and pages And the new ASP NET Web Part Framework enables rich portal style layout and end user customization features that would require tens of thousands of lines of code to write today Along with all these features ASP NET 2 0 also brings with it 45 new server controls that enable powerful declarative support for data access login security wizard navigation image generation menus treeviews portals and more The next few sections will provide you with a glimpse of these features Master Pages ASP NET 2 0 introduces a new concept known as master pages in which a common base master file con tains the
30. page 7 Part Introduction Control Category Controls Login controls Login LoginName LoginStatus LoginView CreateUser Wizard ChangePassword PasswordRecovery Navigation controls Menu TreeView SiteMapPath Web Parts controls WebPartManager WebPartZone CatalogZone EditorZone ConnectionsZone DeclarativeCatalogPart PageCatalog Part ImportCatalogPart AppearanceEditorPart Behavior EditorPart LayoutEditorPart PropertyGridEditorPart Other controls BulletedList FileUpload HiddenField ImageMap Wizard WizardStep MultiView View Substitution Content ContentPlaceHolder To start with the next section will explore the new data source controls supplied with ASP NET 2 0 Data Controls As mentioned previously one of the important goals of ASP NET 2 0 is 70 code reduction The data controls supplied with ASP NET 2 0 play an important role in making this ambitious goal a reality Data source controls provide a consistent and extensible method for declaratively accessing data from web pages Data source controls supplied with ASP NET 2 0 are as follows Q lt asp SqlDataSource gt This data source control is designed to work with SQL Server OLE DB Open DataBase Connectivity ODBC and Oracle databases Using this control you can also select update delete and insert data using SQL commands lt asp O0bjectDataSource gt N tier methodology allows you to create web applications that are
31. re 1 1 shows the output produced by the page when requested from the browser Data Binding using SqlDataSource control Microsoft Internet Explorer vag File Edit View Favorites Tools Help v x 2 A Search Favorites 5 m Address amp http flocalhost MyProjects Wrond Chapter 2_SqDataSourceExamele aspx x Go Links ProductCategoryID Name rowguid ModifiedDate af Bikes cfoda25c df7 1 47a7 b31b 64ee161aa37e 9 24 2006 8 50 33 PM 2 Components c657828d d808 4aba 91a3 af2ce02300e9 6 1 1998 12 00 00 AM 3 Clothing 10a7c342 ca82 48d4 3a33 46a2eb089b74 6 1 1998 12 00 00 AM 4 Accessories 2be3be36 d9a2 4eee b593 ed895d97c2a6 6 1 1998 12 00 00 AM E Dene Figure 1 1 9 Local intranet Security Controls With the large amount of business being done on the web security is vitally important for protecting not only confidential information such as credit card numbers but also users personal details and preferences Thus most of the web applications require the capability to authenticate users on their web sites Although this was easy to do in ASP NET 1 x you still had to write code With ASP NET 2 0 things have changed for the better For security related functionalities ASP NET 2 0 introduces a wide range of new controls Q lt asp Login gt Provides a standard login capability that allows the users to enter their credentials Q lt asp LoginName gt Allows you to display the name of the logged in
32. rovide support for easily deployable applications with or without source Even from this broad set of aims you can see that ASP NET 2 0 is a great advance from 1 x for both developers and administrators For the purposes of this chapter the features of ASP NET 2 0 based on the following three core themes are examined Q Developer productivity Q Administration and management Q Speed and performance Note that this chapter isn t an in depth look at any specific feature instead it gives you a taste of what s to come so that you can see how much easier web development is going to be Developer Productivity One of the goals of ASP NET 2 0 is to enable developers to easily and quickly build feature rich web applications To accomplish this Microsoft looked at the existing ASP NET 1 x applications to identify the common features patterns and code that developers build over and over today Once they identified those features they componentized those features and included them as built in functionality of ASP NET With ASP NET 2 0 the ASP NET team has a goal of reducing the number of lines of code required for an application by a whopping 70 To this end Microsoft has introduced a collective arse nal of new features that are now available to developers in ASP NET 2 0 Chapter 1 Introduction to ASPNET 2 0 Using these features you can spend your time building richer more fully featured applications by lever aging the new c
33. rt tasks can go a long way in increas ing the productivity of the developers allowing developers to create feature rich database driven web applications without writing a single line of code Creating Web Projects With Visual Studio 2005 you have more flexibility and features for managing the files in your web pro jects When you bring up the New Web Site dialog box and click on the Browse button you will see the dialog box shown in Figure 1 3 17 Part Introduction Choose Location we i Local Internet Information Server Gl z Select the Web site you want to open tax File System E Local Web Servers wy Default Web Site ient Local IIS i e 03 PBSData A L PBServer FTP Site Reports y ReportServer ity Remote Site o Use Secure Sockets Layer Open Cancel Figure 1 3 As you can see from Figure 1 3 you have the following options when creating web projects Q File System Support With Visual Studio 2005 you now have the option of creating a new web application within any folder on your computer Note that neither IIS nor Front Page Server Extensions is required to be installed on your computer You can simply point the web applica tion to a specific folder and start building web pages This is made possible through the new built in ASP NET enabled web server that ships with Visual Studio 2005 Using this new web server you can develop and debug web appl
34. rties or override them Characteristics of ASP NET 2 0 Themes Some of the important characteristics of ASP NET 2 0 themes are Q Themes make it simple to customize the appearance of a site or page using the same design tools and methods used when developing the page itself thus obviating the need to learn any special tools or techniques to add and apply themes to a site Q As mentioned previously you can apply themes to controls pages and even entire sites You can leverage this feature to customize parts of a web site while retaining the identity of the other parts of the site Q Themes allow all visual properties to be customized thus ensuring that when themed pages and controls can achieve a consistent style 12 Chapter 1 Introduction to ASPNET 2 0 Q Customization themes override control definitions thus changing the look and feel of controls Customization themes are applied with the Theme attribute of the Page directive Q Stylesheet themes don t override control definitions thus allowing the control to use the theme properties or override them Stylesheet themes are applied with the Stylesheet Theme attribute of the Page directive Now that you have an understanding of the concepts behind themes the next section provides you with a quick example of creating a theme and utilizing it from an ASP NET page Creating a Simple Theme To create a theme and apply it to a specific page go through the following steps
35. ses contain protected fields whose types and names map to controls declared in the ASPX file The following code listing shows the aspx file named HelloWorld aspx lt Page Language C CodeFile HelloWorld aspx cs Inherits HelloWorld gt lt html gt lt body gt Chapter 1 Introduction to ASPNET 2 0 lt form id forml runat server gt lt asp TextBox ID TextBoxl1 runat server gt lt asp TextBox gt lt asp Button ID Buttonl runat server OnClick Buttonl_Click Text Button gt lt asp Label ID Label1 runat server gt lt asp Label gt lt form gt lt body gt lt html gt The code behind file referenced by Helloworld aspx file is Helloworld aspx cs which is defined as follows using System using System Web UI using System Web UI WebControls public partial class HelloWorld System Web UI Page protected void Buttonl_Click object sender EventArgs e Labell Text TextBoxl1 Text As you can see HelloWorld aspx contains the markup and HelloWorld aspx cs contains the code The Inherits attribute in the Page directive identifies the code behind class while the CodeFile attribute identifies the file containing the class Note the absence of any fields in the He1loWor1d class providing mappings to controls in the ASPX file Old style code behind is still supported but this new model is now the preferred one Not surprisingly Visual Studio 2005 supports the new model natively Creating a
36. st of breed HTML source editor an improved visual page designer better IntelliSense support a new project system better support for working with data and full XHTML stan dards support Collectively these features enable you to develop data driven web applications faster than ever before The next few sections will explore some of the important web development improve ments coming with VWD Better Source Code Editing VWD provides an improved HTML source editor that enables you to write and modify your pages faster The source editor provides full Intellisense throughout your files and has new features for navi gating and validating your markup If you are not aware what IntelliSense is it is the pop up code hints that automati cally appear when you type in the development environment Although Visual Studio NET provides excellent IntelliSense support it gets even better with Visual Studio 2005 In Visual Studio 2005 Intellisense pops up everywhere For example you can take full advantage of IntelliSense within the script blocks Page directives inline CSS style attributes and Web config as well as in any generic XML file that contains a DTD or XML Schema reference HTML Source Preservation 16 Visual Studio 2005 preserves the formatting of your HTML markup including all white space casing indention carriage returns and word wrapping The formatting is preserved exactly even when switch ing back and forth betw
37. t head gt and lt form gt As mentioned previously the master pages also contain one or more content placeholders that are used to define regions that will be rendered through the content pages Now that you have had a general understanding of master pages take a look at an example First create a master page named CommonPage master and add the code shown in Listing 1 1 Listing 1 1 A Master Page Example lt master language C gt lt html gt lt head runat server gt continued 5 Part Introduction Listing 1 1 continued lt title gt Master Page lt title gt lt head gt lt body gt lt form runat server gt Master Page Content lt br gt lt b gt lt asp ContentPlaceHolder id MiddleContent runat server gt lt asp ContentPlaceHolder gt lt b gt lt form gt lt body gt lt html gt Apart from looking at the file extension you can also identify a master file by looking at the new page directive named master at the top of the page This declarative is used to identify that the current page is a master page and prevents users from requesting the page from a browser Inside the code the code contains an element named asp ContentPlaceHolder which will be used by all the content pages to render appropriate content that is specific to their pages That s all there is to creating the master page To create a content page add a new ASP NET page named Content Page aspx and modify th
38. tomatic database server cache invalidation This powerful and easy to use feature 20 Chapter 1 Introduction to ASPNET 2 0 allows developers to aggressively output cache database driven page and partial page content within a site and have ASP NET automatically invalidate these cache entries and refresh the content whenever the back end database changes ASP NET 2 0 also introduces the Substitution control which allows you to link dynamic and cached content in a web page Caching with the DataSource Controls The DataSource controls enable you to cache database data while connecting a NET application to a database The DataSource control provides various properties such as EnableCaching which you can use to automatically cache the data represented by a DataSource control The syntax to cache a database table in a memory for 120 seconds is lt asp SqlDataSource ID SqlDataSourcel EnableCaching True CacheDuration 120 ConnectionString Server localhost database AdventureWorks uid user pwd word SelectCommand SELECT FROM Production ProductCategory Runat server gt The above syntax caches a database table ProductCategory by setting the EnableCaching property of the DataSource control to True The CacheDuration property of the DataSource control specifies the time in seconds for caching the data before it is updated in a database containing the ProductCategory table The value of the Time parameter is set to 120 to cache
39. urce editor it will be automatically validated in real time Invalid HTML will automatically be underlined with a red squiggly line and all the validation errors are also summarized in real time within the Task List window Code Refactoring Code Refactoring allows you to change the code structure without changing or affecting what the code itself actually does For example changing a variable name or packaging a few lines of code into a method are part of Code Refactoring The main difference between Code Refactoring and a mere edit or find and replace is that you can harness the intelligence of the compiler to distinguish between code and comments and so on Code Refactoring is supported everywhere that you can write code including both code behind and single file ASP NET pages Smart Tasks Smart tasks are a new feature that displays a pop up list of common tasks that you can perform on an ASP NET control For example when you add a GridView control to a page a common task list appears which allows you to quickly enable sorting paging or editing for the GridView Visual Studio 2005 enables you to perform many of the most common programming tasks directly from the designer sur face When you drag new controls onto the designer surface a pop up list of common tasks automati cally appears You can use the common tasks list to quickly configure a control s properties as well as walk through common operations you might perform with it Sma
40. ve admin tool that plugs into the existing IIS Administration MMC enabling an administrator to graphically read or change any setting within the configuration files ASP NET 2 0 also provides new health monitoring sup port to enable administrators to be automatically notified when an application on a server starts to expe rience problems New tracing features will enable administrators to capture runtime and request data from a production server to better diagnose issues Visual Studio 2005 also ships with a new web based tool that provides a very easy way to administer an ASP NET web site You can access this by clicking Website gt ASP NET Configuration in Visual Studio 2005 This web based tool wraps much of the Management API thereby providing an easy and effective way to remotely administer a site Figure 1 4 shows the ASP NET Web Application Administration tool in action ASP Net Web Application Administration Microsoft Internet Explorer Sax Eile Edit View Favorites Tools Help i gt aA Plh A Fwote amp s5 BVA Go Links How do I use this tool 8 Home L Security i Application Il Provider Welcome to the Web Site Administration Tool Application MyProjects Wrox Chapter1 Current User Name THAMIYA SERVER ADMINISTRATOR i Enables you to set up and edit users roles and access permissions for your site Security Site is using windows authentication for user management Applicatio
41. zone to another zone or change its appearance look and feel and so on Q Users can also export and import Web Part controls so the Web Parts can be effectively shared among other sites Q Users can create connections between two Web Parts by establishing communication between Web Part controls As a developer you will typically work with Web Parts in one of the three ways creating pages that use Web Parts controls creating individual Web Parts controls or creating complete personalizable web por tals You can create two kinds of Web Parts in ASP NET 2 0 Custom Web Part Those Web Part controls that derive from the System Web UI WebControls WebParts WebPart class Q Generic Web Part A custom control that does not inherit from the WebPart class and is still used as a Web Part is called GenericWebPart For example if you place a Text Box control inside a WebPartZone control a zone on the page that hosts the Web Parts control the TextBox control will be wrapped to a GenericWebPart class This section provides you with a simple generic Web Part creation example followed by a code examina tion Listing 1 3 shows the code required to implement the Web Part Listing 1 3 Creating a Simple Generic Web Part lt Page Language C gt lt html xmlns http www w3 org 1999 xhtml gt lt head runat server gt lt title gt Example of a GenericWebPart lt title gt lt head gt lt body gt lt form id forml ru
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