Frameworks

Frameworks

It is not essential to use the standard webforms development model when developing with ASP.NET. Noteworthy frameworks designed for the platform include:

• Base One Foundation Component Library (BFC) is a RAD framework for building .NET database and distributed computing applications.
• DotNetNuke is an open-source solution which comprises both a web application framework and a content management system which allows for advanced extensibility through modules, skins, and providers.
• Castle Monorail, an open-source MVC framework with an execution model similar to Ruby on Rails. The framework is commonly used with Castle ActiveRecord, an ORM layer built on NHibernate.
• Spring.NET, a port of the Spring framework for Java.
• Skaffold.NET, A simple framework for .NET applications, used in enterprise applications.

 Versions

The ASP.NET releases history tightly correlates with the .NET Framework releases:

Date	Version	Remarks	New ASP.NET related features
January 16, 2002	1.0	First version released together with Visual Studio .NET	Object-oriented web application development supporting inheritance, polymorphism and other standard OOP features Developers are no longer forced to use Server.CreateObject(...), so early-binding and type safety are possible. Based on Windows programming; the developer can make use of DLL class libraries and other features of the web server to build more robust applications that do more than simply rendering HTML (e.g. exception handling)
April 24, 2003	1.1	released together with Windows Server 2003 released together with Visual Studio .NET 2003	Mobile controls Automatic input validation
November 7, 2005	2.0	codename Whidbey released together with Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Web Developer Express and SQL Server 2005	New data controls (GridView, FormView, DetailsView) New technique for declarative data access (SqlDataSource, ObjectDataSource, XmlDataSource controls) Navigation controls Master pages Login controls Themes Skins Web parts Personalization services Full pre-compilation New localization technique Support for 64-bit processors Provider class model
November 21, 2006	3.0		Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) Windows Communication Foundation which can use ASP.NET to host services. Windows CardSpace which uses ASP.NET for login roles.
November 19, 2007	3.5	Released with Visual Studio 2008 and Windows Server 2008	New data controls (ListView, DataPager) ASP.NET AJAX included as part of the framework Support for HTTP pipelining and syndication feeds. WCF Support for RSS, JSON, POX and Partial Trust All the .NET Framework 3.5 changes, like LINQ etc.
August 11, 2008	3.5 Service Pack 1	Released with Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1	Incorporation of ASP.NET Dynamic Data Support for controlling browser history in an ASP.NET AJAX application Ability to combine multiple JavaScript files into one file for more efficient downloading New namespaces System.Web.Abstractions and System.Web.Routing
April 12, 2010	4.0	Parallel extensions and other .NET Framework 4 features