ASP.NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008 bring great new functionality around Web development and design that makes building standards based, next generation Web sites easier than ever. From the inclusion of ASP.NET AJAX into the runtime, to new controls, the new LINQ data capabilities, to improved support for CSS, JavaScript and others, Web development has taken a significant step forward.

New Features in ASP.NET 3.5

With ASP.NET AJAX, developers can quickly create pages with sophisticated, responsive user interfaces and more efficient client-server communication by simply adding a few server controls to their pages. Previously an extension to the ASP.NET runtime, ASP.NET AJAX is now built into the platform and makes the complicated task of building cross-platform, standards based AJAX applications easy.

New ListView and DataPager Controls

The new ListView control gives you unprecedented flexibility in how you display your data, by allowing you to have complete control over the HTML markup generated. ListView‘s template approach to representing data is designed to easily work with CSS styles, which comes in handy with the new Visual Studio 2008 designer view. In addition, you can use the DataPager control to handle all the work of allowing your users to page through large numbers of records.

New Web Features in Visual Studio 2008

Visual Studio 2008 is the recommended tool for developing ASP.NET applications. Unlike previous versions of Visual Studio, which were targeted to a specific framework version (i.e., Visual Studio .NET 2003 targeted ASP.NET 1.1 and Visual Studio 2005 targeted ASP.NET 2.0), Visual Studio 2008 is multi-targeted, meaning that you choose from a drop-down list whether to have Visual Studio 2008 build applications against the ASP.NET 2.0, 3.0, or 3.5 frameworks. Visual Studio 2008 also includes an improved Designer experience, JavaScript debugging and IntelliSense features, and the ability to view and even step into the core .NET Framework code during debugging

New Web Design Interface

Visual Studio 2008 has incorporated a new Web designer that uses the design engine from Expression Web. Moving between design and source view is faster than ever and the new split view capability means you can edit the HTML source and simultaneously see the results on the page. Support for style sheets in separate files has been added as well as a CSS properties pane which clarifies the sometimes-complex hierarchy of cascading styles, so that it is easy to understand why an element looks the way it does. In addition Visual Studio 2008 has full WYSIWYG support for building and using ASP.NET Nested Master Pages which greatly improves the ability to build a Web site with a consistent look and feel.

JavaScript Debugging and Intellisense

In Visual Studio 2008, client-side JavaScript has now become a first-class citizen in regards to its debugging and Intellisense support. Not only does the Intellisense give standard JavaScript keyword support, but it will automatically infer variable types and provide method, property and event support from any number of included script files. Similarly, the JavaScript debugging support now allows for the deep Watch and Locals support in JavaScript that you are accustomed to having in other languages in Visual Studio. And despite the dynamic nature of a lot of JavaScript, you will always be able to visualize and step into the JavaScript code, no matter where it is generated from. This is especially convenient when building ASP.NET AJAX applications.

How do I enable parent paths for a website on my server?

The following article explains how to enable parent paths for a website. By default, parent paths are disabled in IIS 6. Parent paths allow you to use “..” in calls to functions such as MapPath. Instead of specifying the full path, you can use “..” to reference a path relative to your current location.

Note: Enabling parent paths may create a security risk as it could allow someone to access files outside the root websites directory.

To enable parent paths for a website, please follow these steps:

1. Log into your server through Terminal Services or Remote Desktop Connection.
2. Click Start, select Programs, select click Administrative Tools and click Internet Information Services.

3. Expand the Server Name, expand Web Sites and find the domain name.

4. Right-click on the domain name and select Properties

5. On the Home Directory Tab under Application Settings click Configuration.

6. On the Options tab, check Enable parent paths

7. Click OK

The Microsoft SQL Server 2005 product family has been redesigned to better meet the needs of each customer segment with four new editions: Express, Workgroup, Standard, and Enterprise. As a low-cost mainstream database, SQL Server 2005 delivers unprecedented value and functionality compared with competitive solutions. The four new editions offer a range of features, from high availability and robust scalability to advanced business intelligence tools, designed to empower the people across your organization through a more secure, reliable, and productive data management platform. Additionally, with the reduced application downtime, robust scalability and performance, and tight security controls, SQL Server 2005 represents a dramatic step forward in supporting the most demanding enterprise systems in the world. Because SQL Server is part of Windows Server System, you will also receive the added benefits through the increased manageability and integration that result from the common engineering strategy implemented across Windows Server System products.

To sign up for our Windows Dedicated Server solutions please go here:

In the following table, the “Comments” column provides comments on the specified feature. Numbers next to check marks indicate footnotes that appear at the bottom of the page. SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition and Evaluation Edition are not listed in the tables. These editions have the same feature set as the Enterprise Edition; the only difference between these editions is the licensing policies.

Scalability and Performance
Feature	Express	Workgroup	Standard	Enterprise	Comments
Number of CPUs	1	2	4	No Limit	Includes support for multicore processors.
RAM	1 gigabyte (GB)	3 GB	Operating system maximum	Operating system maximum	Memory limited to maximum supported by operating system.
64-bit Support	Windows on Windows (WOW)	WOW
Database Size	4 GB	No Limit	No Limit	No Limit
Partitioning					Support for large-scale databases
Parallel Index Operations					Parallel processing of indexing operations
Indexed Views					Indexed view creation is supported in all editions. Indexed view matching by the query processor is supported only in Enterprise Edition.

High Availability
Feature	Express	Workgroup	Standard	Enterprise	Comments
Database Mirroring			1		Advanced high availability solution that includes fast failover and automatic client redirection
Failover Clustering			2
Backup Log-shipping					Data backup and recovery solution
Online System Changes					Includes Hot Add Memory, dedicated administrative connection, and other online operations
Online Indexing
Online Restore
Fast Recovery					Database available when undo operations begin

Manageability
Feature	Express	Workgroup	Standard	Enterprise	Comments
Auto Tuning					Automatically tunes database for optimal performance.
Profiler	1	2
SQL Server Management Studio Express	See Comments				Easy-to-use graphical management tool available as a separate download or included with the SQL Server Express w/Advanced Services download
Management Studio					Full management platform for SQL Server; includes Business Intelligence (BI) Development Studio.
Database Tuning Advisor					Automatically suggests enhancements to your database architecture to improve performance.
Serviceability Enhancements					Dynamic management views and reporting enhancements.
Full-text Search	See comments				Available for SQL Server Express in the SQL Server Express w/ Advanced Services download
SQL Agent Job Scheduling Service

Security
Feature	Express	Workgroup	Standard	Enterprise	Comments
Advanced Auditing, Authentication, and Authorization
Data Encryption and Key Management					Built-in data encryption for advanced data security.
Integration with Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer					Scans your system to check for common security vulnerabilities.
Integration with Microsoft Update

Programmability
Feature	Express	Workgroup	Standard	Enterprise	Comments
Stored Procedures, Triggers, and Views
T-SQL Enhancements					Includes exception handing, recursive queries, and support for new data types.
Common Language Runtime and .NET Integration
User-defined Types					Extend the server with your own custom data types.
Native XML					Includes XML indexing and full-text XML search.
XQuery
Notification Services					Allows the building of advanced subscription and publication applications.
Service Broker	See comments				SQL Server Express can exchange messages with other editions. Messages between instances of SQL Server Express must be routed through another edition.

Integration and Interoperability
Feature	Express	Workgroup	Standard	Enterprise	Comments
Import/Export
Integration Services with Basic Transforms					Provides graphical extract, transform, and load (ETL) capabilities.
Integration Services Advanced Transforms					Includes data mining, text mining, and data cleansing.
Merge Replication	1	2
Transactional Replication	3	4
Oracle Replication					Transactional replication with an Oracle database as a publisher
Web Services (HTTP Endpoints)					Support for native Web services, Web Services Description Language (WSDL), and Web authentication

Business Intelligence
Feature	Express	Workgroup	Standard	Enterprise	Comments
Report Server	See Comments				Report Server is available for SQL Server Express in the SQL Server Express with Advanced Services download.
Report Builder					End-user reporting tool
Reporting Data Sources	1
Scale Out Report Servers
Data Driven Subscriptions
Infinite Clickthrough
Data Warehousing
Star Query Optimization
SQL Analytical Functions
BI Development Studio	See Comments 2	3			Integrated development environment for building and debugging data integration, OLAP, data mining, and reporting solutions.
Enterprise Management Tools					Integration with SQL Management Studio, SQL Server Profiler, SQL Server Agent, Backup/Restore.
Native Support for Web Services (Service Oriented Architectures)	4	5			Allows access to data from any device.
Analysis Services					Powerful analytics and data mining capabilities.
Unified Dimensional Model (UDM)					Enterprise business data model enables fast, interactive, ad hoc analysis of large data sets. Builds smarter reports that leverage centralized business logic and key performance indicators (KPIs), as well as the performance of UDM.
Business Analytics					Multidimensional Expression (MDX) scripts and MDX debugger, .NET stored procedures, Time Intelligence, KPI Framework.
Advanced Business Analytics					Account intelligence, metadata translation, perspective and semi-additive measures.
Proactive Caching					Provides automated caching for greater scalability and performance.
Advanced Data Management					Partitioned cubes, parallel processing, server synchronization.
Full Writeback Support					Dimension and cell writeback
Data Mining					Nine algorithms including decision and regression trees, clustering, logistic and linear regression, neural networks, naive bayes, association, sequence clustering, and time series. Build smarter reports that leverage centralized business logic and KPIs, as well as the performance of UDM.
Advanced Performance Tuning					Additional options for tuning data mining models for the highest accuracy, performance, and scalability.
SQL Server Integration Services Data Flow Integration					Perform data mining prediction and training operations directly in your operational data pipelines.
Text Mining					Convert unstructured text data to structured data for analysis via reporting, online analytical processing (OLAP), or data mining.

Installing DNS On Windows 2003

This tutorial will cover the installation of DNS on a Windows 2003 system. By reading through this tutorial you will learn about caveats that need to be noted when installing one of the most important services on a Windows network.

Ensure that you have Windows Server 2003 Std is installed and that a static IP address has been assigned. Figure 1.1 depicts how DNS should be configured and under the advanced TCP/IP settings.  In the DNS settings you must point the server to itself for DNS resolution.  If external internet names need to be resolved you can configure a forwarder so that the requests are sent to the DNS server of the ISP or an external DNS server.  Selecting a DNS server that is consistently up is paramount as external name resolution rests on this resource.

Figure 1.1

Install Microsoft DNS Server

Click on Start, Control Panel, Add or Remove Programs and then on Add or Remove Windows Components.  Then click on Components list, then click on Networking Services and then click Details, select the Domain Name System (DNS) check box, and then click OK. Follow the below figure 1.2 for guidance.

Figure 1.2

After installing DNS you will need to test if the installation was successful and if you are able to resolve names.  Nslookup is a built-in utility that can be used to test if the service has been installed and configured correctly.  Remember to test both internal and external names before concluding your tests. After typing Nslookup it connects to the configured server within your TCP/IP properties or if you run this command form a client it will connect to the DNS server handed out by DHCP.  You will then be able to type in the name you want to lookup i.e. www.google.com or machine.localdomain.net it will then resolve the name to an IP address if this happens you have installed and configured DNS correctly.

C:\>nslookup
*** Default servers are not available
Default Server:  UnKnown
Address:  127.0.0.1
help
Commands:   (identifiers are shown in uppercase, [] means optional)

Install MySQL on a Windows Server

The following article explains how to install MySQL on a Windows Server. The process involves downloading the latest version of MySQL directly to your Windows server and then installing the software. MySQL is a free product. Once installed, you may begin creating and using MySQL databases on your server

To install MySQL, please follow these steps:

1. Log into your server through Terminal Services or Remote Desktop Connection.
2. Open a Web browser and load http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/4.1.html
3. Download Windows (x86) ZIP/Setup.exe
4. Unzip the file you downloaded above and run Setup.exe.
   
5. Click Next to begin the installation wizard.
6. Select Typical Installation and click Next.
   
7. Click Install. The installation will take a few moments.
8. Click Next until you reach the Wizard Completed screen.
9. Check Configure the MySQL Server now and click Finish.
10. Click Next to begin the MySQL Server Instance Configuration Wizard.
11. Select Detailed Configuration and click Next.
    
12. Select Server Machine and click Next.
    
13. Select Multifunctional Database and click Next
    .
14. For InnoDB Tablespace Settings, leave the default settings and click Next.
    
15. Select Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) and click Next.
    
16. Check Enable TCP/IP Networking, leave the default Port Number and click Next.
    
17. Select Standard Character Set and click Next.
    
18. Check Install as Windows Service, uncheck Include BIN directory in Windows PATH and click Next.
    
    
19. Enter a password for your root user, uncheck Create an Anonymous Account and click Next.
    
20. Click Execute to complete the installation.

How do I install PHP on a Windows Server?

The following article explains how to install PHP on a Windows Server running IIS 6. The process involves downloading the latest version of PHP directly to your Windows server and then installing the software. PHP is a free product.

To install PHP, please follow these steps:

1. Log into your server through Terminal Services or Remote Desktop Connection.
2. Open a Web browser and load http://www.php.net/downloads.php
3. Download the Windows PHP5.x ZIP package.
4. Create a new directory, c:\PHP.
5. Unzip the file you downloaded above into c:\PHP.
6. Create a new directory, C:\PHP\phpsessions.
7. Right click the C:\PHP folder and select Properties.
8. On the Security Tab click Add.
9. Type IUSR_COMPUTERNAME (where computer name is the name of your computer) in the text area, click Check Names and then click OK.
   
10. Select the IUSR_COMPUTERNAME user, check the Full Control box and click OK.
    
11. Open C:\PHP\php.ini-dist in Notepad.
12. Within the file, make the following replacements:
    • Replace ;extension=php_mysql.dll with extension=php_mysql.dll
    • Replace ;session.save_path = “/tmp” with session.save_path = “C:\PHP\phpsessions”
    • Replace session.gc_maxlifetime = 1440 with session.gc_maxlifetime = 43200
    • Replace SMTP = localhost with SMTP = smtp.yourdomain.com
    • Replace ;sendmail_from = me@example.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it with sendmail_from = user@yourdomain.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
13. Save the file as C:\windows\php.ini.
14. Copy C:\PHP\libmysql.dll and C:\PHP\ext\php_mysql.dll to the C:\windows\system32 folder.
15. Open IIS located under Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager.
16. Right click Web Service Extensions and select Add a new Web service extension.
    
17. Enter php as the Extension Name, check Set extension status to Allowed and Click Add.
    
18. Enter the path to C:\PHP\php5isapi.dll and click OK.
    
19. Right click Web Sites and select Properties.
    
20. On the ISAPI Filters tab, click Add.
21. Enter php as the Filter Name, enter C:\PHP\php5isapi.dll as the Executable and click OK.
    
22. On the Home Directory tab, click Configuration.
23. Click Add.
24. Enter C:\PHP\php5isapi.dll as the Executable, enter php as the Extension and click OK.
    
25. On the Documents Tab, click Add.
26. Enter index.php and click OK.
    
27. A popup box may appear asking if you want to apply the settings to certain websites. Choose specific websites to enable PHP on or Select All and click OK.
28. Right click your Computer Name, expand All Tasks and click Restart IIS.
    
29. Choose Restart IIS from the dropdown menu and click OK.
    

To test your installation of PHP, please follow these steps:

1. Open up Notepad and create a new document.
2. Add the following text into your new document: <?php phpinfo(); ?>
3. Save this new file to your website root as phpinfo.php.
4. In a Web browser, navigate to phpinfo.php.

How to use the ASPMail component to send email from a web page

Using the component is pretty simple. It really only involves three main steps which are:

1. Creating the object
2. Setting the properties
3. Calling the SendMail method

Send an email with ASPmail

The following code is an example of how to use AspMail from VBScript:

<%
Set Mailer = Server.CreateObject(“SMTPsvg.Mailer”)
Mailer.FromName = “Test Form”
Mailer.FromAddress= ” joebloggs@domainname.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ”
Mailer.RemoteHost = “mailhost.localisp.net”
Mailer.AddRecipient “John Smith”, “jsmith@anotherdomainname.com”
Mailer.Subject = “Test Product!”
Mailer.BodyText = “Dear John” & VbCrLf & “Your test order has been processed!”
if Mailer.SendMail then
Response.Write “Mail sent…”
else
Response.Write “Mail send failure. Error was ” & Mailer.Response
end if
Set Mail = Nothing
%>

Form Handling

All or partial input for a message may come from a form. For example, a form posted to the server with a request method of GET (i.e.

) may provide the message recipient’s email address, subject and message text as follows:

Mailer.AddRecipient Request.QueryString(“ToName”), Request.QueryString(“ToAddress”)
Mailer.Subject = Request.QueryString(“Subject”)
Mailer.BodyText = Request.QueryString(“MsgBody”)

The form may also use the POST method (i.e. ) in which case the code would look as follows:

Mailer.AddRecipient Request.Form(“ToName”), Request.Form(“ToAddress”)
Mailer.Subject = Request.Form (“Subject”)
Mailer.BodyText = Request.Form (“MsgBody”)

You can use any mixture of static and dynamic data in setting the components properties as dictated by your needs. For example, you may wish to send the mail to a single user. In this case you could modify the code to look something like this:

Mailer.AddRecipient “John Smith”, ” jsmith@alocalhost.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ”
Mailer.Subject = Request.QueryString(“Subject”)
Mailer.BodyText = Request.QueryString(“MsgBody”)

Generic Form Handling

In some cases users may wish to use a number of different forms to send email with the same block of code. ASP allows you to loop through each QueryString or Form variable and append each one to string variable which is then assigned to the BodyText property.

strMsgHeader = “Form information follows” & vbCrLf
for each qryItem in Request.QueryString
strMsgInfo = strMsgInfo & qryItem & ” – ” & request.querystring(qryItem) & vbCrLf
next
strMsgFooter = vbCrLf & “End of form information”
Mailer.BodyText = strMsgHeader & strMsgInfo & strMsgFooter

To return form contents in the original form order your code might be…

strMsgHeader = “Form Information Follows: ” & vbCrLf
for i = 1 to Request.Form.Count
strMsgInfo = strMsgInfo & Request.Form.Key(i) & ” – ” & Request.Form.Item(i) & vbCrLf
next
strMsgFooter = vbCrLf & “End of form information”
Mailer.BodyText = strMsgHeader & strMsgInfo & strMsgFooter