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Moving from Classic ASP to
ABSTRACT
is
Microsoft
new
offering
for
Web
application
development,
innovation
within have
resulted in
significant
industry
popularity
for this
product.
Consequently there is an increased need for
education. The Web
Application
Development is a third year undergraduate course.
To meet the demands
of both industry
and students, we have changed the focus of this
course from Classic
ASP to . This paper
reports this move. The significant features of
and
the
motivations
for
this
move
are
discussed.
The
process,
the
problems
encountered, and
some helpful online learning resources are
described.
Key words
Web
Application Development, Classic ASP, , Move,
1. INTRODUCTION
is
not
just
a new
version
of
ASP.
It
provides
innovation
for
moving
Windows
applications
to
Web
applications.
Web
services
and
the .NET
framework
have made the vision of the Web as the
next generation computing platform a reality.
With
server
controls,
Web
forms
and
“
code-
behind
”
,
we
can
develop
a
Web
application
by
using
a
complete
object-oriented
programming
(OOP)
model.
This
increases
the
popularity
of
in
industry.
The
industry
project
is
the
final
course
of
the
Bachelor
of
Computing
Systems
(BCS)
degree
at
UNITEC,
in
which
students
undertake
a
real-world
project.
We
have
observed
a
rapid
growth
of
related industry projects in our school.
The Web Application
Development (WAD) paper is a third
year
undergraduate
course. It was originally
offered using ASP 2.0 and ColdFusion. To meet the
demands
from
both
industry
and
students,
we
have
changed
the
course
content
to
cover
, Visual ()
and ColdFusion. This
change
commenced
with the first
semester of 2003.
This
paper
will
examine
the
features
of
and
explain
why
these
are
unique.
The
motivations
for
moving
to
are
discussed
by
analyzing
the
current situation of related to
industry projects in our school, analyzing the
results of short surveys on students,
and analyzing whether is a better tool
for teaching. Problems encountered
during the move are also discussed and some of
the
learning
resources
are
presented.
It
is
anticipated
that
these
will
be
helpful
for
teachers who intend to introduce .
2. WHAT MAKES SPECIAL?
There
are
many
articles
on
the
Internet
discussing
the
advantages
of
over
Classic
Active
Server
Pages
(ASP),
such
as
that
introduces
an
integrated development environment
(IDE), a single development library for all types
of applications, compiled as well as
strongly typed code, and a true OO approach to
Web application development (Goodyear,
2002, Bloom, 2002).
Traditionally, we
have three versions of ASP (ASP 1.0, ASP 2.0 and
ASP 3.0),
which are called Classic ASP.
Although each version provides certain new
features to
overcome the shortcomings
of its predecessors, these versions of ASP follow
the same
working
model
and
share
many
limitations.
Their
successor
supports
complete
new
working
model
while
preserving
the
traditional
working
model
and
provides innovative techniques to
overcome the limitations of Classic ASP.
2.1. Architecture
enhances
and
extends
the
Windows
DNA
(Windows
Distributed
interNet Application). The windows DNA
specification is a methodology for building
n-tier
applications
using
Microsoft
(DCOM/COM)
technologies.
Breaking
applications into
functional pieces and deploying these across a
network is a strategy
to make better
use of organizational resources. This needs a
well-planned architecture.
In the past,
usually it was the windows DNA. DCOM communication
normally has
problems with firewalls
and proxy servers. This means Windows DNA usually
only
works well within an intranet, not
on the
Internet. DCOM/ COM also need
registry
entries.
makes
the
process
of
creating
and
integrating
Web
Services
easier,
which can be used in a similar manner
to the Windows DNA. Here DCOM/COM is
no
longer involved. HTTP (as channels), SOAP (as
formatters) and XML are used for
communication
and
data-transfer
between
distributed
components.
This
overcomes
the
problem
of
communicating
across
the
Internet
and
across
corporate
firewalls
without resorting
to proprietary solutions that require additional
communications ports
to
be
opened
to
external
access.
In
addition,
URI
(uniform
resource
identifier)
and
UDDI
(Universal
Description
Discovery
and
Integration)
are
used
for
remote
components references
instead of registry entries.
2.2.
Development
integrates
seamlessly
with
IDE.
includes
built-in
support
for
creating
and
modifying
content.
This
unifies
the
ASP/VB
programming
models
for
the
developers.
Instead
of
opening
multiple
IDEs
(as
with
Classic
ASP
platform),
developers
can
open
a
single
IDE
and
do
all
their
work
from
a
clean,
consistent interface.
is equipped with powerful debugging environment.
This
means
that
the
powerful
debugger
for
Windows
applications
is
now
available
to
debug Web applications as
well.
enables
programmers
to
take
advantage
of
the
OOP
model,
for
example, code sharing.
Under OOP model, one of the most common ways to
achieve
code sharing is inheritance,
which is not available in Classic ASP. Since
complete OO
features are supported in ,
developers can transfer their OO design smoothly
into code, enabling a software company
to keep their Windows application
development
styles,
with
which
they
are
familiar,
in
Web
application
development;
and also they
can convert their Windows applications into Web
applications without
major
modifications.
’
s improved state
maintenance features enable us to provide users
with
Web applications that are richer
and faster than Classis ASP (Olges,2002).
supports
advanced
session
state
management.
There
are
two
major
problems
with
session
management
in
Classic
ASP:
session
objects
are
stored
in
the
Web
server
memory and session IDs are stored on
the client computers as cookies. These prevent
session
management
from
being
efficiently
implemented.
solves
these
problems in two ways: it provides a
“
cookieless
”
< br> option for session objects so that a
session
ID
can
be
passed
via
URL;
it
provides
three
different
session
modes
(in
process, state server, and SQL Server),
so that a session object can either be stored on
the Web server, a remote server or a
database.
3. THE MOTIVATIONS FOR MOVING
3.1. The industry motivation
I
’
ve checked
almost all the industry projects in our school for
three semesters on
whether they are WAD
related, if yes, then what tools they have used.
Table 1 shows
a brief summary of the
results.
For these three
semesters, the total
ASP/ projects are
increasing, but
slowly.
However
the
Classic
ASP
projects
are
dropping
quickly
and
the
projects
are
increasing
rapidly
(in
the
speed
of
more
than
12%
per
semester).
This
gives us an idea that
is
preferred over Classic ASP in industry especially
given that is
only
officially
first
released
in
2002.
Our
student
’
s
feedbacks
from
their
industry
communication
confirm
this
view.
A
huge
number
of
articles
on
the
Internet
also
support this view. This encourages us
to drop Classic ASP and move to in
our
WAD
course.
Higher
education
has
over
years
recognized
that
it
is
a
service
industry
and
has
to
revaluate
their
approach
in
the
industry
by
placing
greater
emphasis on meeting the expectations
and needs of their stakeholders (Nair, 2002).
3.2. The student motivation
The students demand . When students
enroll in our WAD course, most
of them
are aiming to become a professional software
developer. As a matter of fact,
some of
them already are software developers, or they were
software developers and
are seeking to
return to the workplace. Techniques highly
demanded in workplace are
of great
interest to them.
A short survey has
been given to past students and current students
respectively.
For
the
past
students,
among
the
11
responses,
100%
students
still
want
to
learn
; and if they are given choice, 82%
students prefer to learn rather
than
Classic ASP, 18% students like to learn both.
These answers are also supported
by
comments,
such
as
“
I
would
prefer
to
know
the
technology
that
the
industry
requires me to work
with
”
,
“
I would like to work in
future as a WAD professional and
I
think would be useful in this
field.
”
For the current
students, among the
16
responses,
75%
students
prefer
to
learn
rather
than
Classic
ASP.
However,
25%
students
answered
no
idea.
This
could
be
due
to
that
they
lack
of
knowledge
of Classic ASP. This survey is done after 6 weeks
of teaching.
3.3. The pedagogical
motivation
Pedagogically speaking, a
good tool for industry is not necessarily a good
tool for
teaching. Is a better tool
for teaching than Classic ASP?
provides
much
richer
language
features
than
Classic
ASP.
We
often
have options to
perform certain tasks. A key benefit of is that
there exists a
more
gradual
transition
in
programming
models
from
simple
to
powerful,
or
from
easy
to
difficult.
Although
supports
OOP
model,
you
don
’
t
have
to
program
by using that model. A Web form without
“
code-
behind
”
will work perfectly.
An
web
page
in
complete
Classic
ASP
model
will
still
work.
Although
is integrated with
, we are not limited to use . A notepad
and
a
FTP
client
with
a
pre-created
Web
application
directory
also
allow
us
to
develop
a
reasonably
large
application.
With
,
we
can
either
develop a large
distributed application with numbers of Web
services and consumers,
or develop a
single simple Web application. Therefore,
provides sufficient
room
for
us
to
organize
course
materials
at
a
suitable
level
for
the
students.
The
challenge for a lecturer is how to
settle in at the right balance of power vs.
simplicity,
or at the right balance of
difficulty vs. ease.
offers a more conventional approach to programming
than does Classic
ASP.
It
possesses
all
the
features
of
a
modern
programming
language.
The
Classic
ASP programming
style favors developers coming from HTML coding
background,
whereas
is
more
suited
to
professional
software
developers.
Given
our
entire
WAD
students
have
taken
C/Delphi
programming
courses,
and
our
aim
is
to
output
software
professionals,
is
a
better
teaching
tool
for
us.
enhances
the
programming
concepts
the
students
learned
from
the
previous
courses
and
provides
a
good
bridge
to
Advanced
Distributed
Computing
and
Advanced
Object- Oriented
Programming.
4. THE PROCESS
Our first step was to learn . After
reading books and online tutorials, the
next step is practical. We set an
implementation server on the laptop in a stand-
alone
environment. The .NET Framework
requires IIS 5 and the above; Windows 2000 or
Windows XP professional will work with
.NET. However, Windows XP home edition
or
Windows
98
won
’
t
work.
On
the
client
side,
we
can
either
use
or
WebMatrix.
Among
these,
only
costs
money.
The
.NET
Framework
is
included
inside
the
package.
We
also
can
download
the .NET
Framework
from the Internet.
After the .NET Framework is installed, the
QuickStart Tutorial is set up. It is
also found on the Internet. This tutorial is
a good starting point for experienced
developers. It is claimed that the readers
“
should
be
fluent
in
HTML
and
general
Web
development
terminology.
……
should
be
familiar with the
concepts behind interactive Web pages, including
forms, scripts, and
data
access.
”
More
complicated
examples
can
be
found
from
Microsoft
.NET
Framework SDK Documentation or
Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Documentation.
The second step was to test
the teaching environment. A teaching server was
set
up for the Intranet on campus. It
is configured for the client computers in the
teaching
lab.
is
installed
on
the
client
computers.
provides
two
ways
to
access
the
Web
server:
FrontPage
server
extensions
and
File
share.
The
FrontPage
server extension
is used on our teaching server. Programming
testing has been done
on all the major
aspects of WAD. Except a few special ones, most of
the problems
occurred during the
testing were minor problems which, after the
communication with
our Web technician,
were resolved.
Teaching materials have
been updated. The major changes have been made on
the
data
interaction,
form
and
controls,
application/session
management,
and
error
handling. Given that
has made XML very practical and the using of Web
service much easier. A lecture on XML
and Web service has been added. As a result,
ColdFusion lectures are reduced. The
assessment has been adjusted accordingly.
5. THE PROBLEMS
We have to
admit that with is a much more complicated
client
server environment than the
Classic ASP environment. This complexity comes
from
the configuration system and the
integration between the client computers
and the Web server.
On
server,
each
level
of
the
application
directory
can
have
a
configuration file. All these
configuration files are optional except . A
developer has full control over those
optional configuration files. Developers become
more involved with the server settings
via these files. One problem that happened to
several students and myself on our home
servers is the permission problem. We found
our
applications
didn
’
t
have
permission
to
write
to
database/XML
files.
Microsoft
(2003)
provides
three
solutions
to
this
problem.
The
simplest
one
is
to
change
the
file
and
set
the
username
attribute
to
SYSTEM
in
the
We
observed
that
behave
differently
in
a
stand-alone
environment,
a
single user client server
environment, and a multiple user client server
environment. A
few problems
don
’
t
occur in
the first
two environments
occur frequently
in
the last
environment.
The
major
one
is
when
we
try
to
create
a
new
project
or
open
an
existing
project,
we
often
get
an
error
message,
“
The
user
name
or
password
you
entered is incorrect, or you do not
have authorization to permit this
operation
”
, even if
our user name and password are
perfectly correct. This problem seems to be caused
by FrontPage server extensions.
Regularly cleaning VSWebCache partially solved the
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