Thanks for the feedback, Walden. I made another attempt to install the Stock Trader application. This time I began with Microsoft's Web Platform Installer instead of downloading prerequisite components individually - except for SQL Server Management Studio (according to the Stock Trader configuration instructions). This time I was able to see the project source, although SQL Server and IIS configuration are still a bit beyond me.
I also took your advise to start with something simpler. I followed an introductory walk-through of a basic Web Form application. A number of years ago I was proficient with Visual Studio and VB. The Web walk-through used the same type of paradigm - project and object templates, wizards, drag & drop, property sheets, event handlers, object inspectors, and intellisense - most of which feels cumbersome to me now - like trying to shoehorn complicated structures meant for stand-alone desktop, object-oriented, and thick-client development into a space meant for traditional thin-client techniques.
It would be interesting to explore the Stock Trader application further, but I haven't got very far, and it has taken me away from my primary objective. I was sucked into it by Microsoft's benchmark claims, which appeared to be exceedingly misleading - with numerous implications and omissions. But there doesn't seem to be much information available either way to substanciate or refute them - except the apparent possibility of testing the application oneself.
Nathan.
----- Original Message ----
From: Walden H. Leverich <WaldenL@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries <web400@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, May 29, 2009 12:48:26 PM
Subject: Re: [WEB400] Why ASP.NET gets no Respect
It appears that ASP.Net is similar to J2EE in that some of software
run natively, while other parts run under managed code. IIS runs
natively. ASP.Net runs under managed code. MS SQL Server runs
natively. I assume each tier communicates via sockets - even though
each may be running on the same box. Is that the case?
Starting w/IIS7 major parts of IIS are managed code too, especially
w/the integrated pipeline. You can use .net handlers just about anywhere
along the request pipeline, no more ISAPI filters! Yea. But yes, certain
parts of IIS are of course "native", not the least of which for example
would be the kernel-mode cache. ASP.Net is managed, yes. SQL Server is
native code, or at least most of it is, parts aren't. The spatial data
types in 2008 for example are actually CLR (.net) objects.
As for communication, don't think of IIS and ASP.Net as being separate
tiers, especially not IIS7+, they're very integrated. Any communication
between them I'm sure is shared memory. As for ASP.Net to the database,
that connection can be a number of different types. If the database is
on the same machine as the web app then you will likely use shared
memory as the transport. But otherwise TCP sockets would be the
transport.
-Walden
midrange.com
