.NET Framework 3.5 : What's new in ASP.NET

• Support for enabling existing ASP.NET 2.0 pages for AJAX
• Creation of ASMX & WCF based web services and consuming them from AJAX Library
• ASP.NET server side application services like authentication, roles management exposed as web services
• ASP.NET Merge Tool - a new tool for merging pre-compiled assemblies
• New ListView control which supports edit, insert, delete, sorting & paging
• ASP.NET integrated with core IIS 7.0 which makes ASP.NET services like authentication & caching available for other content types also.
• Microsoft AJAX Library to support AJAX based web development

ASP.NET 3.5 as an Alternative to CGI

Microsoft’s alternative to a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is ASP.NET, now in version 3.5. As a unified web platform, ASP.NET provides what you need to develop applications that hold state and use the information that you put into the HTML form. Instead of sending form information into a vacuum when you click a submit button, your data goes where it can be stored temporarily or permanently. Usually, when we think of saving state, we imagine writing the data to a storage device like a hard drive. Using a word processor, every time you save your file, you save its state. Using ASP.NET, you can do the same thing with information from anyone who uses your web application. This allows you to build applications where the information entered can be stored for use with either the next HTTP request or with a whole set of data entered by users all over the world—that’s quite a feat compared with saving state in your word processor file.
ASP.NET’s state-management facilities provide you with the tools that you need to control state. You do not necessarily want to save all states of a web page, but you certainly want to save the state of data entered by users and perhaps the URL of a page. Having state
management allows you to do this.