Using SQL Databases with ASP.Net

Hi, I'm Drewster Caraman, and in this video tutorial series we're going to be covering how to create SQL tables, and Access and SQL server, migrating those tables from Access into SQL server, and then manipulating those tables through asp.net. However, before we begin all that, I'd like to take a few minutes to explain the front end, back end concepts on which asp.net is based. Another name for front end, back end is client server, which is referring to a program where there's a front end that shows the user the gui interface where all the data's input, and the back end which where all the processing is actually done and data is sent to and from the front end gui interface. However, front and back end can be applied to several different things other than websites. Start off by defining what front end is. Front end is the input side of the system. This is where graphic user interface, or gui, is set up and data is often entered. An example of this is a front end computer that is set up to filter an another more powerful but yet less user-friendly machine. Another example of this is a gui interface over an already existing yet not really user-friendly protocol.

A perfect example of this would be an FTP program, such as Fetch. the FTP protocol already exists and can be executed through a UNIX shell. However, it is not that user-friendly because it's a command-line program. What Fetch does, Fetch is a graphic-user interface, that executes FTP commands through mouse-clicks on the interface. This front end is a just dummy interface, because it don't actually do anything. No data is processed. The back-end are the actual FTP protocols that are executed on events sent from the front end. The back end is defined by the processes that are not seen by the user. A perfect example of this is ASP itself. Another back end example is a compiler such as visual studio. The front end of this would be your programming languages such as C++, Visual Basic, C sharp, any number of those.

When your code is compiled that's where your back end comes into play. Your back end takes that programing language code and converts it to the actual machine language and, uh, performs optimizations specific to the, um, machine architecture for whatever computer that you're on. Likewise, the front end generates the p code or the pseudocode, that allows the user to see the, uh, program code at runtime for debugging purposes. One of the most common examples of your front end, back end, are your operation systems. For example, a gui file manager, such as Windows Explorer, or Mac Finder, is the front end of your file system. The command line of your text user interface, that actually processes and executes the command from the front end, is considered to be your back end. This same concept applies to software packages such as Microsoft Office and SQL server management studio. Now the point of all this is to give you an introduction to the concepts on which ASP.net is built. ASP is an open source programming language and to give you a little background on it, it was first introduced in 1996 in the IIS 3.0 package. One of the biggest things ASP's got going for it is its use of objects. There is six main objects in ASP.net and each object corresponds with frequently used functions. Give you an example of two of them. The response object is used to send data from the server to the html page. This is where you get your response Dot Right, which is equivalent to counsel Dot Right line or C ALT. This function allows data to be written from the back end to the front end. The other example is the request object. The request object is the opposite of that. The request object is the front end requesting data from the back end. A good example of this is if you pass a variable through your url. You use your request dot query string, in order to get that variable out of the url.

Because ASP is integrated with Visual Studio, it has a major advantage over several of the other dynamic web languages. This advantage is its use of controls. Controls are pre-made objects that can be as simple as a button or text field. Or they can be as complicated as a data source, or a crystal report, which generates reports from your data source. Another major advantage of this integration with visual studio is the ability to debug your code while running your website. Another strength of asp.net is its use of the .net framework. The .net framework allows for abstraction markup. Whether your page is called in Internet Explorer or Firefox or even a mobile phone, your markup abstraction takes care of the various html markups needed to render it in this browser. In other dynamic web languages, this markup abstraction has to be done by the programmer. In addition to all these advantages I have just listed for asp, the biggest advantage asp has going for it is its use of front end, back end. When an asp web file is created, two files are actually made. The first file is your front end. It is the aspx form that is sent to your client's machine. When you place dynamic content on an .aspx webpage, they're placed between these active code tags. However, Microsoft frowns on this practice, except for purposes of data binding, because the more active tag codes you have on an .aspx webpage, the more calls are going to be made to your server, and the longer it will take the page to be rendered out on the front end.

The second page that gets created when you create a new web form in asp, is the aspx.vb, where .vb is whatever your programming language you're using. It could be .cpp or .cs. There's an only page load event. It's activated when the client requests to view the page. Although processes and functions are done and if necessary data is sent to the .aspx front end page. However, this page never leaves the server. This front end, back end method makes programming much simpler, it also reduces the amount of active content that is sent to the client machine. The more active content that has to be resolved on the .aspx webpage, the longer it's going to take the client browser to render out the final page. This back end method of deploying the content allows for faster rendering times in the client's browser. That's an introduction to asp.net and a kind of overview of the biggest advantages of using it. The remainder of this video series will actually focus on using asp.net with SQL databases. In video 2, Luis will show you how to create SQL tables and both Access and the SQL server, and two methods of moving that data from Access onto the SQL server.