Chapter 11. Programming the Web Application

The tools in Microsoft Visual Studio and ASP.NET allow you to easily create Web pages and push them to a server without giving much thought to the underlying architecture of the application server itself. This can be beneficial, but it is important to know when, why, and how you might interact with the application server. In fact, to write more efficient and reliable Web applications, you should understand where you can leverage the many components of your Web application server.

Fortunately, ASP.NET provides you access to a great deal of information related to the server platform and the browser-to-server communication. It allows you to examine information about the server using a set of intrinsic objects. It also allows you to intercept messages on the server to program against the server’s features. This chapter explores both programming against the Web site and using the ASP.NET objects to get more information from the application server.