[...]...methods and utilize properties from other applications without concern about how the other applications were built .NET is about XML Web services XML Web Services are programmatic You can think of Web Services as components for the Internet It is really standards-based reuse Web Services allow you to expose code that implements business logic that can be re-used in multiple applications, but... language runtime, on the other hand, advances us further down the road by providing a multilanguage execution environment that allows developers to build many different types of applications, from Web services to Windows applications to mobile applications and everything in between We can now create components and integrate them fully with Web services (and each other) without regard for programming... to an application Figure 1.5: Communication flow among ASP.NET components The heart of ASP.NET is System .Web It's actually contained in System Web. dll System .Web is responsible for the Web- related tasks in the NET Framework As you'll discover in the following chapters, whether they discuss Web forms (Chapter 5), Web controls (Chapter 6), or Web services (Chapter 7), all of this functionality flows... employee information We will also data bind the grid to an ADO.NET data set Notice how similar building Web applications in Visual Basic NET is to what you've done in the past with Windows applications: Open the Web Application Project 1 Open Visual Studio Net and select an ASP.NET Web application 2 Name it EmployeesVB 3 Notice that the Web form looks very similar to Visual Basic forms, as shown in... on the group accessing the site, and for sufficiently faster time to market for scalable Internet solutions .NET Framework The NET Framework is an environment for designing, developing, deploying, and running XML Web services, Web applications, NT services, and Windows applications, among others The NET Framework is separated into two parts: the common language runtime and the class libraries Let's explore... table is state management built right in, which includes Web farm support Caching is very important in Web applications to increase speed, and now that is very easy to take advantage of at several levels within ASP.NET Finally, one last important benefit is the ability to update files while the server is running As illustrated in Figure 1.5, ASP.NET applications no longer run in the context of IIS; now... just has to be a valid and solid business reason for using it As a Visual Basic Developer, you can extend the skills you've honed to utilize NET in your solutions and applications This and the remaining chapters will give you a solid understanding of developing Web applications while building on the knowledge you've gained as a Visual Basic developer That said-let's go ahead and dig deeper On to Chapter... get a quick introduction to ASP.NET, which will be greatly expanded on as we progress through the rest of the book Introduction to ASP.NET Unless you've been living in a cave for the last year or so, you've most likely heard about the next generation of active server pages, ASP.NET But do you understand the implications of this technology? You've grown up as a developer with a very rich development... (HTML) and logic (scripts), has code that must be interpreted and browser compatibility issues, and doesn't allow you, among other things, to support 24x7 applications, you can get cranky That's really all changed now that Microsoft Visual Studio NET brings the RAD environment to Web development How does ASP.NET fix the preceding problems? Well, just like you're used to in Visual Basic, ASP.NET allows... developers can now rapidly develop applications for the Web and smart devices, just like they've always been able to do for Microsoft Windows This is in no small thanks to the reengineering of Windows Forms and the addition of Mobile Web Forms, and the Smart Device Extensions Toolkit Like the other member languages within NET, Visual Basic NET can seamlessly interoperate within the Visual Studio NET multilanguage . class="bi x0 y0 w0 h0" alt=""