Building Effective ASP .NET 3.5 Web Applications using Visual Studio 2008

Prerequisites:

Delegates should have basic knowledge of HTML and web page creation. These skills can be obtained by attending QA-IQ's Building an Effective Web Site course.

Delegates should have an existing knowledge of a .NET programming language (C#2.0/3.0 or VB 2005/2008). Delegates without these skills would benefit from attending a QA-IQ .NET programming language course.

Course Description:

This course provides the necessary skills and techniques to design and write scalable, robust and secure Web applications using Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and the ASP.NET 3.5 Framework.

You will gain in-depth technical knowledge of ASP.NET and its related technologies and obtain practical insights into developing enterprise-scale, data-driven Web applications. Throughout the course you will be building a fully functional ASP.NET 3.5 web solution, using best practices including writing secure code to protect against potential malicious attacks.

The course is presented as a mixture of lectures and hands-on exercises. Instructions and solutions are provided in both C# 3.0 and Visual Basic 2008, enabling you to work with your choice of language. (Before attending, delegates must already know one of these .NET languages.)

Course Objectives

On completing this course, you will be able to:

- Create file- and HTTP-based web projects using Visual Studio 2008
- Use validation techniques to ensure input data accuracy
- Use Master Pages and CSS to enforce design principles
- Personalise web applications using profiles, themes and skins
- Create modular user interfaces using web parts and user controls
- Implement menus, wizards and other site navigation mechanisms
- Diagnose problems and implement a coherent error handling architecture
- Create data-driven and data-bound user interfaces using XML, relational data sources, and LINQ
- Understand and manage state across and within page transitions
- Implement authentication, authorisation and role based security using the ASP.NET 3.5 membership system and the login controls
- Extend the pipeline using custom modules and handlers
- Describe and implement ASP.NET AJAX functionality to provide a richer UI experience
- Create and use simple Web Services

This course includes the following modules:

Fundamentals

• Internet fundamentals review
• Application configuration
• Processing model
• Page execution
• Event lifecycle
• Object model overview

Using Visual Studio 2008

• Creating a Web Site
• Project and solution structures
• ASP.NET folder structure
• Essential features for Web development
• Understanding code separation
• Copying and Publishing a Web Site

Designing your web site

• Overview of layout options
• Creating common layout with Master Pages
• Server controls overview
• Stylesheet designer
• Themes and Skins

Validation and Error Handling

• The need for validation
• Validation on the Client and Server
• ASP.NET validation controls
• Ensuring correctness in posted data
• Exception handling in ASP.NET

Site Navigation

• Navigation scenarios
• Basic navigation
• Crosspage postbacks
• Accessing the previous page
• Creating Wizards
• Templating Wizards
• The Navigation API and Controls
• UrlRewriting

User controls and Web Parts

• Introduction to Usercontrols
• Overview of Custom Controls
• Building common page parts
• Web Parts

Components and Architecture

• Web architecture considerations
• Component based development
• Data access issues
• Distributed architectural issues

ADO.NET

• ADO.NET managed providers
• Configuring ASP.NET applications to use ADO.NET
• Using XML data sources
• LINQ

LINQ

• Object-Relational designer
• LINQ to SQL

Databinding and presentation

• Data source controls
• GridView, FormView, DetailsView
• ListView, DataPager
• Treeview

Caching

• Cache API
• Caching data
• Managing data refreshing Cache dependencies
• Output caching and substitution

State Management

• Managing state within a page
• Managing state across pages
• Managing state within a single visit
• Managing long-term state across visits

Securing access to Web applications

• IIS authentication/authorization
• ASP.NET authentication/authorization
• Security objects
• Scenario based best practice
• Custom (Forms) authentication
• Using the Membership and Roles APIs
• Login controls

Under the covers

• ASP.NET pipeline
• Writing Custom ASP.NET modules
• Writing Custom ASP.NET handlers

Web Services

• Exposing a simple Web Service
• Consuming a simple Web Service
• Overview of WSE 3.0
• Consuming a WCF service

ASP.NET AJAX

• AJAX Scenarios
• Infrastructure
• ASP.NET AJAX controls
• Introduction to ASP.NET AJAX script library
• Consuming a Web Service from the client