Free ASP.NET Goodies!

Free. Marketing professionals have known for years the positive results that this word produces. They use the word free to lure you in so that they can sell you something else. Luckily for you, that will not be the case in this article. All of the goodies, resources, tools, and utilities I mention are all free. They won't cost you a dime. In this article, I will share with you the results of my search for zero-cost resources for the ASP.NET developer. Space restrictions limit the depth to which I can discuss each item that I've found, but my descriptions should be enough for you decide if you would like to research the material further.

Getting Started

It's 1:37 A.M. and you find yourself dazed and wandering through the streets of Las Vegas. You remember thinking to yourself, "With a hand like this, I can't lose!" You're tired, your feet ache, and more importantly, you're broke.

Fortunately, there are a number of free ASP.NET resources at your disposal so your current lack of funds isn't going to be a problem. These resources include development environments, Web controls, open source projects, utilities/tools, and a number of Web sites with articles and tutorials to select from. So relax and stop worrying. You may not have a penny to your name, but you can still develop ASP.NET Web sites!

Microsoft Resources

Why not start at the source? Microsoft provides a number of free resources that help promote ASP.NET (and .NET in general).

ASP.NET Web Matrix

It is logical to start with the ASP.NET Web Matrix Project because before you can start to build ASP.NET solutions, you need a tool to build them with. ASP.NET Web Matrix is a free (hence its inclusion in this article!) ASP.NET IDE. Microsoft designed it to be a lightweight tool designed for ASP.NET development. It features an ASP.NET and HTML designer, the ability to work directly with Microsoft Access and Microsoft SQL Server databases, support for multiple programming languages, the ability to create data-bound pages without writing any code, and the ability to work with XML Web services (see Figure 1).

If you are already working with Visual Studio .NET and you are thinking that Web Matrix sounds like it could replace Visual Studio .NET, it can't and it won't. While Web Matrix is no Visual Studio .NET, it does serve a purpose and has one feature that Visual Studio .NET cannot match, the price!

Cassini

If you are looking for an open-source .NET Web server written in C#, I have good news for you. It exists and it's named Cassini (Figure 2).

When Microsoft initially released the ASP.NET Web Matrix Project it included a mini-Web server named the ASP.NET Web Matrix Web Server. Since then, Microsoft has released the complete managed C# source code and named it Cassini.

One feature of Cassini is that it will only accept requests from localhost, so you won't open your development machine up to Web server worms and other nasty code. On the other hand, since Microsoft provided the source code, you could change Cassini to accept non-localhost requests.

If you're currently using IIS and you think that you won't ever need to use Cassini, you might want to rethink that. Consider the situation where you have an application and you want to ship some ASPX files with it. You can not (and should not) assume the user will have IIS running so you can ship Cassini as a mini-IIS in your application. Since you are not dependent on IIS when using Casinni, other opportunities open up for distributing ASP.NET applications; for example, creating auto-run CDs containing ASP.NET applications.

By: Jim Duffy

Jim Duffy is founder and president of TakeNote Technologies, an award-winning training, consulting, and software development company specializing in .NET software developer training and helping clients create business solutions with Microsoft enterprise technologies like Virtual Earth. Jim's expertise is with Visual Studio, Visual Basic, ASP.NET, SQL Server and Visual FoxPro-to-.NET conversions. He has a BS degree in Computer and Information Systems and over 25 years of programming and training experience. He is an energetic trainer, skilled developer, and has been published in leading developer-oriented publications.

Jim is a Microsoft Regional Director, a Microsoft MVP award recipient since 2003, an INETA speaker, and is an entertaining and popular speaker at regional user groups and international developer conferences. He is also a co-host of Computers 2K9, a call-in radio show on WRBZ (AM 850), 850 The Buzz, in Raleigh, NC.

You can find additional information about Jim, TakeNote Technologies, links to his blog, as well as a public training class schedule, on-site training information, consulting information, and software development services at www.takenote.com.

jduffy@takenote.com