A little more of the same

Session 14

The Next Release of ASP.NET - Significant Features Available Soon...(really soon)

Another session led by the ASP.NET Deveopment Manager Matt Gibbs. This session was billed as walkthrough of the most compelling features of the next release and started with an ASP.NET roadmap in which the audience were treated to a discussion of the .NET framework through the ages.

Next we dived into the topic of Astoria data services. For those of you who arent in the know, Astoria enables applications to expose data as a data service that can be consumed by web clients within a corporate network and across the internet. The data service is reachable over HTTP, and URIs are used to identify the various pieces of information available through the service. Interactions with the data service happens in terms of HTTP verbs such as GET, POST, PUT and DELETE, and the data exchanged in those interactions is represented in simple formats such as XML and JSON.

A demo of Astoria followed.

Matt's focus was then onto ASP.NET AJAX and more specifically, how browser history and navigation can be improved by using AJAX. The discussion was consolidated with a demonstration based around an online shopping site with AJAX provifing state management. The site consisted of a 4-page shopping wizard which allowed the user to move back and forth between all pages and see all details without the need for full postback to the server.

Matt discussed desirable feature of ASP.NET AJAX called script combining which can dramatically improve web site performance by ensuring scripts are called efficiently as possible.

Matt next described in detail the Silverlight controls which he touched on in his previous seminar ASP.NET: Why, What, How and When?