What is ASP.NET used for in software development?

ASP.NET extends the prominent .NET framework with tools and libraries for building web-based applications. First released in 2002, the framework still enjoys great popularity, and that’s not without a reason.

In this detailed article, we discuss the framework’s essential components, features, benefits, and applications.

ASP.NET framework: quick overview & history

ASP.NET is an open-source web-application framework, initially created to extend the modern .NET framework. It’s used for building dynamic websites, web services and APIs, enterprise applications, web portals, and more.

Before the .NET and ASP.NET introduction, Microsoft utilized several technologies:

• Active Server Pages (ASP) – initial server-side script engine for real-time generated pages
• Visual Basic – event-driven language and integrated development environment
• Component Object Model (COM) – distributed platform for creating binary components
• ActiveX technology – deprecated framework for defining reusable components

By integrating these technologies, .NET and ASP.NET introduced a comprehensive, interconnected framework. It facilitates software performance, flexibility, scalability, and security by combining the most critical concepts and providing a unified programming environment.

Talking about .NET and ASP.NET evolution, these technologies were fundamental:

• Classic ASP has provided the early scripting environment for dynamic web pages
• Visual Basic has offered a simplified programming model for rapid application development
• COM facilitated the interaction of components
• ActiveX extended COM’s capabilities by enabling interactive content and complex user interfaces 

ASP.NET framework compared with Classic ASP

ASP.NET consists of different object-oriented languages, class libraries, as well as Common Language Runtime. ASP.NET applications can have configurable components, state management, and intuitive user interfaces. Classic ASP, on the other hand, a server-side scripting engine, is dependent on interpreted scripting languages. More specifically, VBScript and Jscript languages. 

But there are many other differences worth mentioning when comparing these technologies:

ASP.NET development: key components

ASP.NET Web Forms

A web application framework and event-driven programming model that provides drag-and-drop functionality. Its primary building blocks are so-called server controls – reusable components for rendering HTML markup and responding to events.

ASP.NET Web Forms provides:

• Event-driven model for building web applications where interactions trigger specific server-side events
• Server-side controls for rendering HTML markup and responding to events
• ViewState management for server-side control management between postbacks
• Data binding for dynamic data display and updates
• Master pages for defining common templates 
• User controls for encapsulating important functionality

ASP.NET Web API

A framework for developing HTTP-enabled APIs for browsers, desktop applications, and other service clients. It’s designed for creating RESTful services, which allow data exchange between platforms and systems.

ASP.NET Web API provides:

• Concern separation for separated business logic 
• RESTful design for stateless, scalable architecture
• Dependency injection for testability and modularity 
• Self-descriptive URIs for clearly defined resources and thereby intuitive applications
• Versioning support for facilitated backward compatibility 
• Model binding for simplified data handling and integrity

ASP.NET MVC

A framework, which separates complex applications into three main components: Model, View, and Controller. It helps efficiently manage sophisticated applications by promoting code organization.

ASP.NET MVC promotes maintainability and testability through several essential features:

• Routing capability that allows mapping URLs to actions in controllers
• Unit testing by supporting dependency injection, unobtrusive scripting, and ActionResult data types
• AJAX and jQuery support
• XML and JSON support for clean, RESTful services.

ASP.NET Core

A cross-platform, high-performance framework for building cloud-based and internet-connected applications. It is a redesign of the ASP.NET framework, which combines Web Forms, Web API, and the ASP.NET MVC, thereby ensuring a consistent programming model.

ASP.NET Core promotes versatility and performance by providing indispensable features:

• Cross-platform capabilities (Windows, MacOS, and Linux)
• Unified framework for building web UIs and APIs
• Dependency injection out of the box
• SPA support by using client-side frameworks
• Side-by-side versioning when targeting .NET Core.
• IIS, Nginx, Apache, Docker, or self-host deployment support

ASP.NET development: key features and benefits

Improved performance

The platform, being built on the .NET framework, is known for enabling application performance and efficiency. By leveraging Just-In-Time compilation, data and output caching, load balancing, request handling, and more, the framework easily outruns scripting languages.

But let’s get into the detail:

• Just-In-Time/JIT compilation – ASP.NET allows code compilation just before code execution
• Data caching – ASP.NET provides extensive caching to cache important information
• Asynchronous programming – as an ASP.NET developer, you leverage asynchronous programming
• Output caching – going with ASP.NET programming, you harness output caching
• Load balancing – ASP.NET applications can be easily scaled by using load balancing
• Request handling – ASP.NET programs can also efficiently manage increased traffic
• Automatic minification and bundling – the framework can minify and bundle CSS and JavaScript files
• WebSocket support – the framework also supports real-time communication between server and client

Enhanced security

The platform has gained great momentum for ensuring application security through several built-in features. These comprise integrated authentication and authorization, input and request validation, and comprehensive error handling among other modern capabilities.

To get a little more specific:

• Integrated authentication and authorization – OpenID Connect, Windows and Forms authentication, and other advanced mechanisms 
• Input and request validation – data annotations, anti-forgery tokens, server- and client-side validation, and other built-in capabilities to prevent malicious attacks
• Built-in anti-CSRF – ASP.NET provides cross-site request forgery prevention out of the box
• Error handling – ASP.NET provides error handling and logging to track and mitigate potential issues

Real-world applications

Enterprise-level applications

Of all options available, the modern ASP.NET framework is winning the competition by providing: 

• Microservices architecture, which allows the development of independently deployable applications
• Modular containerization with Docker and Kubernetes
• Serverless computing, which allows automatic scaling through execution in response to events
• And other key features mentioned earlier, including caching, dependency injection, and more

To avoid being unfounded, the following famous platforms are based on the ASP.NET framework:

• Microsoft’s website – the tools they built for users are the same tools they used to build their website, it just makes sense
• Stack Overflow – a community for programmers to learn and share their knowledge and experience
• GoDaddy – the largest services platform for entrepreneurs, an Internet domain registry and registrar
• MarketWatch – a platform that provides the latest stock market, financial and business information

Industry-specific applications – what about healthcare technology?

EHR & EMR systems are a striking example of more industry-specific applications of the ASP.NET framework. EHR & EMR solutions, digital versions of paper-based medical documentation, typically require data security, integrity, interoperability, and real-time data processing – all provided by the ASP.NET platform.

To learn more about the applications of those ASP.NET capabilities, dive into Abto Software’s recent projects:

• A custom EMR solution for simplified practice management
• A tailored EMR solution for diagnostic imaging network

Another thing, the framework is an indispensable choice for building highly reliable telemedicine platforms. User authentication and authorization, audio and video streaming, data encryption, cross-platform support – no problem.

To add to that, the framework is also being utilized for building both user-friendly and secure patient portals. Appointment scheduling and reminders, patient-doctor messaging, privacy controls, customizable interfaces – you will not have to worry about integrating essential functionality.

eCommerce systems

ASP.NET is also great for building both intuitive and adaptable to changing business needs ecommerce systems.

ASP.NET provides built-in features, including secure data encryption, authentication, authorization, and others. What’s more, the framework also supports smooth and effortless integration with various payment gateways, which ensures seamless transactions.

CMS solutions – another application worth mentioning

ASP.NET is also among sought-after choices for responsive, flexible, scalable, and customizable CMS solutions. For example, Umbraco, DotNetNuke, Sitefinity, Kentico – all based on the ASP.NET framework.

ASP.NET supports so-called responsive design principles meaning seamless user experiences across devices. What’s more, the framework also provides various tools and libraries for creating custom-designed workflows, user interfaces, content types, and more.

Technology integration

Artificial intelligence along with machine learning

Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services

Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services is a comprehensive collection of services that integrate artificial intelligence. These provide computer vision, speech recognition, natural language processing, optical character recognition, and other modern capabilities.

Within the ASP.NET framework, one can call Azure Cognitive Services via APIs or SDKs to leverage the features. These require minimal setup and can be integrated and used within applications.

Microsoft ML.NET

Microsoft ML.NET is an open-source framework, which enables software developers to apply machine learning. It provides the tools and libraries for classification and regression, object detection, product recommendation, and more.

Within the ASP.NET framework, one can use ML.NET to create ML models to implement advanced features. These require minimal setup to be efficiently built, trained, evaluated, and deployed.

Cloud computing

ASP.NET provides Azure integration, which makes it an ideal framework for designing cloud-based applications. Software engineers can deploy cloud-based applications by leveraging Azure services (Azure App for hosting, Azure SQL for storage, Azure DevOps for CI/CD).

Azure provides automatic scaling, high availability, and secure user authentication using Azure Active Directory. What’s more, software engineers can leverage other popular Azure services – Azure Functions, Azure Storage, Cognitive Services, and more.

Microservices architecture and containerization

First thing, ASP.NET Core allows building microservices architecture:

• Each microservice can be independently designed, developed, deployed, and maintained
• Each microservice can be independently scaled for efficient resource allocation
• The failures within services don’t affect other services within applications
• The isolation of microservices simplifies updates, code refactoring, and testing

Another thing, ASP.NET Core allows using component containerization:

• Service containers package applications with dependencies, thereby ensuring consistent behavior
• Service containers provide isolated execution environments, thereby minimizing potential conflicts between components
• Also, containers are lightweight and employ system resources more efficiently
• Runtime containers can be easily scaled

Internet of Things applications

ASP.NET provides IoT support through features including scalability, RESTful APIs, SignalR support, and others. ASP.NET capabilities along with IoT functionality provide real-time data processing, flexibility, scalability, modular architecture, and more. 

ASP.NET can be used to design IoT applications that meet business-specific requirements:

• A fleet management portal for tracking and optimizing a fleet of vehicles and assets
• A building management platform for monitoring and controlling energy management, access control, temperature, humidity, and other critical indicators
• A healthcare monitoring system for managing patient information from personal wearable devices
• An environment monitoring system for analyzing climate information from sensors

How we can help

Abto Software, Microsoft Solutions Partner, can deliver custom .NET and ASP.NET development services. Preliminary discovery, requirement documentation, design, engineering, quality assurance, and deployment – our engineers cover everything within ASP.NET development outsourcing.

Work with an ASP.NET development company and achieve higher performance, better security, and integration with other Microsoft technologies!

Our services:

• .NET development
• ASP.NET development
• Web app development
• Mobile app development
• Cloud services
• Full-cycle, custom software development

Our expertise:

• Artificial intelligence
• Computer vision

Contact us for ASP.NET development services and optimize your operations!