What is new in ASP.NET 3.5 & 4.0 ?

New Features in ASP.NET 3.5

The .NET Framework version 3.5 includes enhancements for ASP.NET in the following areas:

• A new EntityDataSource control that exposes the Entity Data Model through the ASP.NET data source control architecture.
• A new ListView data control that displays data and that provides a highly customizable UI.
• A new LinqDataSource control that exposes Language-Integrated Query (LINQ) through the ASP.NET data source control architecture.
• A new merge tool (Aspnet_merge.exe) that merges precompiled assemblies to support flexible deployment and release management. This feature is not available in Visual Web Developer Express Edition.

ListView Data Control

The ListView control combines many aspects of existing data controls. The ListView control is useful for displaying data in any repeating structure, similar to the DataList and Repeater controls. Unlike those controls, the ListView control supports edit, insert, and delete operations as well as sorting and paging. The paging functionality is provided for ListView by the new DataPager control.

The ListView control is a highly customizable control that enables you to use templates and styles to define the control’s UI. Like the Repeater, DataList, and FormView controls, templates in the ListView control are not predefined to render specific UI in the browser.

DataPager Control

The DataPager control is used to page through data that is displayed by a control that implements the IPageableItemContainer interface, such as the ListView control. The DataPager control supports built-in paging UI. You can specify the paging UI by using the NumericPagerField object, which lets users select a page by page number. You can also use the NextPreviousPagerField object, which lets users navigate through pages one page at a time, or to jump to the first or last page. Alternatively, you can create custom paging UI by using the TemplatePagerField object.

LinqDataSource Control

The LinqDataSource control exposes Language Integrated Query (LINQ) through the ASP.NET data source control architecture. You use the LinqDataSource control when you are creating a Web page that retrieves or modifies data and you want to use the programming model that is provided by LINQ. You can simplify the code in a Web page by enabling the LinqDataSource control to automatically create the commands for interacting with the data. By using the LinqDataSource control, you can reduce the amount of code that you must write to perform data operations when compared to performing the same operations in the SqlDataSource control or the ObjectDataSource control. When you use the LinqDataSource control, you also benefit by learning only one programming model to interact with different types of data sources.

You can use declarative markup to create a LinqDataSource control that connects to data from either a database or a data collection such as a collection. In the markup, you can specify the criteria for displaying, filtering, ordering, and grouping data. When the data source is an SQL database table, you can also configure a LinqDataSource control to update, insert, and delete data. You do not have to write the SQL commands to perform these tasks. The LinqDataSource class provides an event model that enables you to customize display and update behavior.

ASP.NET Merge Tool

The ASP.NET merge tool (Aspnet_merge.exe) lets you combine and manage assemblies that are created by the ASP.NET pre-compilation tool (Aspnet_compiler.exe). (The merge tool was released earlier as an add-on for Visual Studio 2005,) The merge tool creates single assemblies for the site. You can create an assembly for the whole Web site, for each Web site folder, or for just the files that make up the Web site UI (pages and controls).

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New features introduced in ASP.NET 4.0 & Visual Studio 2010

• Code Snippets
• New Profiles
• Generate From Usage
• Multi-Targeting
• MultiMonitor
• Code Navigation in Class Files
  • Code Navigation
  • View Call Hierarchy
  • Code Identifier Highlighting
• Intellisense Improvements
• EnablePersistedSelection
• Web.Config Transformation
• URL Routing
• Add Reference Dialog
• Compressing Session Values
• Improvements in C# 4.0
  • Dynamic lookup
  • Named parameters
  • Optional parameters
• Meta Tags
• Generating Client IDs
• Permanent Redirect
• New Browser Definitions
• Publishing a Project
  • Package/Publish
  • Deploy SQL
  • Silverlight Applications

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