ASP.NET and the .NET Framework

For the latest version of Commerce Server 2007 Help, see the Microsoft Web site.

Commerce Server 2007 features full integration with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 or Visual Studio 2008, and Microsoft SQL Server in addition to integration with ASP.NET 2.0 Authentication and Profiles/Membership capabilities. By using Commerce Server 2007, you can take advantage of the features in Microsoft .NET Framework version 2.0 with update, 3.0, or 3.5. Commerce Server 2007 .NET APIs allow for seamless integration into ASP.NET Framework applications and greatly facilitate development of Web service applications. In addition, Commerce Server 2007 implements a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to facilitate seamless integration into Web services-enabled environments.

You use the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 or Visual Studio 2008 development system to create .NET-based Commerce Server applications that use the Microsoft .NET Framework. Because Commerce Server is tightly integrated with Visual Studio, you can access essential Commerce Server tools from inside the Visual Studio development environment. You can also create Commerce Web applications in a team development environment.

ASP.NET 2.0 Features Overview

Because Commerce Server 2007 is fully based on ASP.NET 2.0, you can take advantage of all the features in ASP.NET 2.0 to your advantage to build your Commerce Server applications. The following table summarizes several of the features in ASP.NET 2.0 that are available for Web service application development.

Feature

Description

Authentication

ASP.NET includes features to help secure your ASP.NET Page Framework applications. These features replace the AuthFilter and AuthManager methods.

For information about how you can use the ASP.NET 2.0 controls, tools, and APIs to control access to pages, see https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=66909.

Master Pages

ASP.NET 2.0 uses Master Pages for maintaining a consistent look across multiple pages and to enable style changes without modifying site code.

For information about how to create ASP.NET pages that follow a consistent theme and style by using Master Pages, search the Microsoft MSDN site for "ASP.NET Master Pages". MSDN contains several references to Master Pages that depend on the version of Visual Studio, ASP.NET, and the .NET Framework that you are using.

Themes and Skins

ASP.NET 2.0 uses themes and skins functionality for enabling changes to the look of page elements without modifying site code.

For a broad overview of the features in ASP.NET 2.0, see https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=66960.

For information about how to use cascading style sheets and images with themes in ASP.NET 2.0, and how you can dynamically load themes at run time, see https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=66954.

For information about how to personalize your data-driven Web applications by using profiles, Web parts, themes, and skins, and how to implement XML-driven forms, see https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=66959.

Compilation support

ASP.NET 2.0 structure site code supports both deployment pre-compilation and full runtime compilation modes.

Event Tracing and Health monitoring

ASP.NET 2.0 provides events—parsing, compilation, and rendering—that you can trace. Event tracing lets you gather important information when events occur, for example, when a user logs on. Event tracing is highly scalable, and requires very little overhead.

ASP.NET 2.0 also provides full-featured application monitoring and health monitoring. A fully extensible event model and an event engine can send events to a variety of sinks. For example, you can configure your ASP.NET Page Framework application to send e-mail every day that contains the information that the server is running and the amount of free memory.

Caching

You can use the caching features that are included in ASP.NET 2.0 to improve the performance and scalability of your ASP.NET Page Framework applications. You can implement granular, multi-tier data and fragment caching for all cacheable elements at the code block, control, and page level. You can centrally enable or disable caches with update intervals specified and refreshed on a per cache basis as needed.

For information about how to use these caching features, see https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=66957.

User input data validation

ASP.NET 2.0 increases the flexibility of validating user input through the addition of validation groups.

For more information about how to implement data validation in ASP.NET 2.0, see https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=66960.

Site navigation

ASP.NET 2.0 lets you define your application's navigation based on a logical structure. This logical structure lets you create a navigation path for your application by logically relating Web pages to each other instead of depending on the physical location of each page on the server. You can reorganize your application's navigation without modifying any code, and you can use the logical structure to create navigational aids such as tree views and menus.

Localization

ASP.NET 2.0 localization framework simplifies the development and support for multiple cultures and locales through improved runtime and tool support.

For more information about how ASP.NET 2.0 provides support for multiple cultures and locales through improved runtime and tool support, see https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=66960.

Web Parts Framework

The ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts Framework provides support for pages that are designed as Web Part Zones. Web Parts give you the infrastructure for creating customizable Web applications, such as intranet portal applications. Either the Web site administrator or the individual users of the Web site can easily customize Web sites built with Web Parts. Web Parts provide flexibility.

For more information about the ASP.NET 2.0 Web Parts Framework, see https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=66960.

For information about how to create custom controls with the adaptive rendering model in ASP.NET 2.0, see https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=66900.

Additional ASP.NET 2.0 Resources

For information to help orient you to ASP.NET 2.0 and ease migration of ASP.NET 1.1 Web services to ASP.NET 2.0, see the following resources:

See Also

Other Resources

Deployment Tools

BizTalk Adapters for Line-of-Business and B2B Trading Partner Integration

SDK Items and Tools

Development Platform and Commerce Server Systems