Part 5. Advanced topics

Part 1 was about how ASP.NET works, and parts 2 and 3 provided a peek at the features that ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC have that you can use to build the UI. Then in part 4, we analyzed the scenarios to build more secure applications, and you learned how to protect them. This last part is dedicated to more advanced scenarios, which will combine most of the topics we’ve previously talked about in this book. These chapters cover both ASP.NET Web Forms and MVC.

Chapter 12 explains how to integrate ASP.NET applications into Ajax-enabled applications and Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). We’ll take a look at how to leverage jQuery and ASP.NET Ajax.

In chapter 13, you’ll learn how to handle state in ASP.NET: from cookies to ViewState to new features introduced in version 4, like the ability to compress the SessionState.

Chapter 14 is dedicated to caching. You’ll find plenty of tips on how to achieve better scalability by implementing a good caching strategy. This chapter also covers how to build custom cache providers, and how Microsoft AppFabric caching works.

Chapter 15 contains miscellaneous topics related to fully extending ASP.NET, from HttpRuntime, to logging, to building a virtual path provider.

Finally, chapter 16 offers some tips on how to build applications that perform better. We’ll talk about minifying content, multithreading, and ParallelFX.