Crs 352
Understanding ASP.NET and ADO.NET

This course is an intensive 2 day seminar for anyone requiring an overview of Microsoft's .NET technology at a conceptual and technical level.

It aims to answer the questions such as

• "Why did Microsoft move from COM+ to .NET ?"
• "How does .NET support mixed language application development, and is this a good idea ?"
• "How easy is it to port existing applications to .NET ?"
• "How does ASP.NET differ from ASP ?"
• "How does ADO.NET differ from ADO ?"
• "How different is programming in VB.NET from programming in VB 6 ?"
• "How do I master the complexity of developing in Visual Studio.NET ?"
• "How much of the .NET technology is available on other platforms ?"
• "To what extent is .NET technology a rehash of research work carried out in the 80's ?"
• "How complex and how stable are the framework services underlying .NET ?"

The seminar includes demonstrations of various applications developed in VB.NET and C#.

Seminar Outline

Getting Started

• What might have motivated Microsoft to develop .NET
• An overview of the evolution of Microsoft technology - from OLE via COM and then DCOM and COM+ to .NET
• An overview of XML and Web Services and how they fit in with .NET

Understanding the .NET Framework

• Design goals
• Common Language Runtime (CLR)
• .NET Programming - VB.NET and C#
• .NET components
• Data and XML
• Web Services
• Web Forms
• Windows Forms

Web services - a technical overview

• What is a service oriented architecture?
• The core components
  • XML
  • SOAP
  • WSDL
  • UDDI

Understanding XML fundamentals

• XML Document structure
• XML Schemas
• XML Namespaces

Implementing Web applications and  Web Services using ASP.NET and ADO.NET

• Visual Studio .NET 
• ASP.NET controls
  • Event driven control model
  • Overview of HTML controls
  • Overview of Server controls
  • Overview of State Management and Caching controls
  • Migrating from ASP to ASP.NET
  • Designing and implementing ASP.NET controls
• Database applications and  ADO.NET
  • ADO.NET - an overview
  • Data Sets
  • Data Reader classes
  • Concurrency
• Visual Studio.Net support for 
  • .NET Web Services
  • XML Serialization

Component Services

• Context
• Instance Management
• Transactions
• Concurrency
• Catalog
• Security
• Queued Components
• Event Service
• Developing Serviced Components

Other Languages for .NET

• COBOL
• Perl
• Python

Extreme Programming and .NET

• Requirements Analysis and Specification
• User interface design issues
• Implementing testable .NET code
• UML and .NET application design
• Patterns and .NET application design
• Scalability and Tuning

Intended Audience

The course is intended for anyone who will, or will be required to, develop .NET applications.

Attendees should have a reasonable understanding (at least at the conceptual level) of 

• working with Microsoft development environments prior to VisualStudio.NET
• Microsoft's COM+ technology and ASP
• OLE-DB and ADO
• SQL Server

Key Skills

After taking this course you will be able to understand and think critically about

• the many strands that make up .NET
• the hidden costs of working with .NET
• COM+ Services and .NET
• the programming technology underlying .NET
• the differences between VB6 and VB.NET
• the similarities and differences between C# and Java. 
• Suitability of ASP.NET and Web Forms for Rapid Application Development
• The ASP.NET object model
• .NET support for XML and Web Services
• ADO.NET as a technology for developing database driven applications
• ADO.NET as a general data access and presentation technology

Demonstrations

• ASP.NET and ADO.NET application development support in Visual Studio.NET
• Simple and complex database query and reporting applications - implemented using Web Forms and Windows Forms
• Using Crystal Reports in a .NET environment
• ASP.NET and  ADO.NET based web site
• How to implement a Web Service application using .NET
• Integrating legacy software (e.g. COBOL) into .NET