ASP.NET is a technology for developing, deploying, and running Web applications. ASP.NET is a part of the Microsoft .NET Framework, so all .NET Framework features are available to ASP.NET applications.
ASP.NET web pages are simply pure text, like HTML files. ASP.NET web pages are the main building block for application development. You can develop your applications in any language compatible with the common language runtime, including Microsoft Visual Basic and C#. These languages enable you to develop ASP.NET applications that benefit from the common language runtime, type safety, inheritance, and so on. ASP.NET incorporates all the important standards of our time, such as XML and SOAP, plus with ADO.NET and the foundation class libraries.
Visual Studio .NET is an excellent development tool for constructing ASP.NET web applications. It provides all of the necessary tools and support for creating ASP.NET web applications. ASP.NET web applications are hosted by Internet Information Server (IIS), which accepts requests from clients and optionally authenticates them before passing the requests on to the Web application. From the following chapters you can learn more about ASP.NET technology in detail.