ASP.NET, the next version of ASP, is a programming framework used to create enterprise-class Web APPLICATIONS. These applications are accessible on a global basis leading to efficient information MANAGEMENT. The advantages ASP.NET offers are more than just the next version of ASP. ASP.NET allows you to use a full-featured programming language to build web applications easily. Classic ASP is different from ASP.NET, though many people confuse the two. ASP uses scripting, which is coded language embedded into HTML in documents. ASP.NET uses a Microsoft framework requiring the programmer to compile the program through a server.

One of the most important goals of .NET was to allow developers to write an ASP.NET application using multiple programming languages. As long as each ASP.NET page contains only one programming language, you can mix and match different pages using different languages and they will work together seamlessly. In ASP.NET, you don't write any code to display the data: you just write the code to bind the data to an object called a Data Grid (which can be done in just a couple of lines). Then, you just have to create a reference on your page to where that Data Grid should go. The Data Grid will be rendered as a table, and will contain all of the data extracted from the database. Microsoft has created an amazingly well designed MSDN library for ASP.NET and all of the other .NET languages. It includes a full class library containing information and examples on every class, function, method, and property accessible through ASP.NET.