Database Programming using VB.Net and SQL Server 2000.
ISBN: 81-901331-5-2
Price:$19.90
Weight: 1.9 Pounds
Pages: 448
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.NET Defined (dot net)
As per the product documentation .Net (dot net) is designed to deliver a wide range of services which allow businesses communicate effectively with their customers and partners who are geographically isolated and participate in the digital economy.
What is .NET ?
.NET (dot net) is Microsoft's strategy of software that provides services to people any time, any place, on any device. An accurate definition of .NET is, it's an XML Web Services platform of dot net technologies which allows programmers to build rich .NET applications, which allows users to interact with the Internet using wide range of smart devices (tablet devices, pocket PC's, web phones etc), which allows to build and integrate Web Services and which comes with many rich set of tools like Visual Studio to fully develop and build those applications.
What are Web Services?
Web Services are the applications that run on a Web Server and communicate with other applications. They use a series of protocols to respond to different requests. The protocols on which Web Services are built are summarized below:
UDDI: Stands for Universal Discovery and Description Integration. It's said to be the Yellow Pages of Web Services which allows Businesses to search for other Businesses allowing them to search for the services it needs, know about the services and contact them.
WSDL: Stands for Web Services Description Language, often called as whiz-dull. WSDL is an XML document that describes a set of SOAP messages and how those messages are exchanged.
SOAP: Stands for Simple Object Access Protocol. It's the communication protocol for Web Services.
XML, HTTP and SMTP: Stands for Extensible Markup Language, Hyper Text Transfer Protocol and Simple Message Transfer Protocol respectively. UDDI, WSDL and SOAP rely on these protocols for communication.
Example of a Web Services Application
Let's say a customer accesses a Website and buys something. The Web services of the business will communicate with the inventory system to see if there is enough stock to fulfill the order. If not, the system can communicate with the suppliers to find one or all of the parts that make up the order before filling the order.
Amazon
Amazon uses web services to enhance its core business model. Amazon's business model is based on retail sales. Amazon's online catalog can be used by its marketting affiliates to sell products for Amazon. The Amazon web API allows their visitors to make purchases.
Real World Application
Microsoft's passport service is an example of a .NET service. Passport is a Web-based service designed to make signing in to Websites fast and easy. Passport enables participating sites to authenticate a user with a single set of sign-in credentials eliminating the need for users to remember numerous passwords and sign-in names. You can use one name and password to sign in to all .NET Passport-participating sites and services. You can store personal information in your .NET Passport profile and, if you choose, automatically share that information when you sign in so that participating sites can provide you with personalized services. If you use Hotmail for your email needs then you should be very much familiar with the passport service.
What is .NET Built On?
.NET is built on the Windows Server System to take major advantage of the OS and comes with a host of different servers which allow for building, deploying, managing and maintaining Web-based solutions. The Windows Server System is designed with performance as priority and it provides scalability, reliability, and manageability for the global, Web-enabled enterprise. The Windows Server System integrated software products are built for interoperability using open Web standards such as XML and SOAP.
Core Windows Server System Products include :
SQL Server2000:
This Database Server is Web enabled and is designed with priority for .NET based applications. It is scalable, easy to manage and has a native XML store.
Application Center 2000: This product is designed to manage Web Applications.
Commerce Server 2000:
This powerful Server is designed for creating E-Commerce based applications.
Mobile Information Server:
This Server provides real-time access for the mobile community. Now Outlook users can use their Pocket PC's to access all their Outlook data while they are moving.
Exchange Server 2000: This is a messaging system Server and allows applications on any device to access information and collaborate using XML.
BizTalk Server 2000:
This is the first product created for .NET which is XML based and allows to build business process that integrate with other services in the organization or with other Businesses.
Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2000: This Server provides Security and Protection for machines. It is an integrated firewall and Web cache server built to make the Web-enabled enterprise safer, faster, and more manageable.
Host Integration Server 2000:
This Server allows for the Integration of mainframe systems with .NET.
When developing real world projects if you don't know how to use the above mentioned Server's which are built for .NET based applications do not worry. Your System Administrator is always there to help you.
.NET and XML
There is a lot of connection between XML and .NET. XML is the glue that holds .NET together. XML looks similar to HTML which is readable and text-based. XML is a method of putting structured data into a text file. XML is the specification for defining the structure of the document. Around this specification a whole family of optional modules are being developed. The reason why XML is linked so much to .NET is, it's platform independent and is well supported on any environment. To move the data contained in an XML file around different organizations using different software on different platforms it should be packed it into something. That something is a protocol like SOAP.
About SOAP
SOAP, Simple Object Access Protocol is a simple, lightweight protocol for exchanging information between peers in a decentralized, distributed environment. It is an XML based protocol that consists of three parts: an envelop that describes what is in the message and how it should be processed, a set of encoding rules and a convention for representing remote procedure calls and responses.
.NET vs Java
Many of us wonder what .NET has to do with Java. Is there any relation between them? Are they similar? and so on. I even hear some people say .NET is Microsoft's answer to Java. I think every language has its own pros and cons. Java is one of the greatest programming languages created by humans. Java doesn't have a visual interface and requires us to write heaps of code to develop applications. On the other hand, with .NET, the Framework supports around 20 different programming languages which are better and focus only on business logic leaving all other aspects to the Framework. Visual Studio .NET comes with a rich visual interface and supports drag and drop. Many applications were developed, tested and maintained to compare the differences between .NET and Java and the end result was a particular application developed using .NET requires less lines of code, less time to develop and lower deployment costs along with other important issues.
.NET Framework Advantages
The .NET Framework offers a number of advantages to developers. The following paragraphs describe them in detail.
Consistent Programming Model
Different programming languages have different approaches for doing a task. For example, accessing data with a VB 6.0 application and a VC++ application is totally different. When using different programming languages to do a task, a disparity exists among the approach developers use to perform the task. The difference in techniques comes from how different languages interact with the underlying system that applications rely on.
With .NET, for example, accessing data with a VB .NET and a C# .NET looks very similar apart from slight syntactical differences. Both the programs need to import the System.Data namespace, both the programs establish a connection with the database and both the programs run a query and display the data on a data grid. The VB 6.0 and VC++ example mentioned in the first paragraph explains that there is more than one way to do a particular task within the same language. The .NET example explains that there's a unified means of accomplishing the same task by using the .NET Class Library, a key component of the .NET Framework.
The functionality that the .NET Class Library provides is available to all .NET languages resulting in a consistent object model regardless of the programming language the developer uses.
Direct Support for Security
Developing an application that resides on a local machine and uses local resources is easy. In this scenario, security isn't an issue as all the resources are available and accessed locally. Consider an application that accesses data on a remote machine or has to perform a privileged task on behalf of a nonprivileged user. In this scenario security is much more important as the application is accessing data from a remote machine.
With .NET, the Framework enables the developer and the system administrator to specify method level security. It uses industry-standard protocols such as TCP/IP, XML, SOAP and HTTP to facilitate distributed application communications. This makes distributed computing more secure because .NET developers cooperate with network security devices instead of working around their security limitations.
Simplified Development Efforts
Let's take a look at this with Web applications. With classic ASP, when a developer needs to present data from a database in a Web page, he is required to write the application logic (code) and presentation logic (design) in the same file. He was required to mix the ASP code with the HTML code to get the desired result.
ASP.NET and the .NET Framework simplify development by separating the application logic and presentation logic making it easier to maintain the code. You write the design code (presentation logic) and the actual code (application logic) separately eliminating the need to mix HTML code with ASP code. ASP.NET can also handle the details of maintaining the state of the controls, such as contents in a textbox, between calls to the same ASP.NET page.
Another advantage of creating applications is debugging. Visual Studio .NET and other third party providers provide several debugging tools that simplify application development. The .NET Framework simplifies debugging with support for Runtime diagnostics. Runtime diagnostics helps you to track down bugs and also helps you to determine how well an application performs. The .NET Framework provides three types of Runtime diagnostics: Event Logging, Performance Counters and Tracing.
Easy Application Deployment and Maintenance
The .NET Framework makes it easy to deploy applications. In the most common form, to install an application, all you need to do is copy the application along with the components it requires into a directory on the target computer. The .NET Framework handles the details of locating and loading the components an application needs, even if several versions of the same application exist on the target computer. The .NET Framework ensures that all the components the application depends on are available on the computer before the application begins to execute.
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