Professional ASP.NET 3.5 in C# and Visual Basic Part 64 pptx

ASP.NET 3.5 includes a handful of systems such as the new membership and role management systems that handle state for users between multiple requests/response transactions.. The systems

Introduction to the

Provider Model

The ASP.NET provider model is an important framework to understand as you build your

applications The ASP.NET provider model was a major change introduced in ASP.NET 2.0, so

you probably already know that ASP.NET is a way to build applications for the Internet For the

Internet means that an application’s display code travels over HTTP, which is a stateless

proto-col ASP.NET works with a disconnected architecture The simple nature of this model means that

requests come in and then responses are sent back On top of that, ASP.NET does not differentiate

one request from another The server containing an ASP.NET application is simply reacting to any

request thrown at it

This means that a developer building a Web application has to put some thought into how users

can remain in context between their requests to the server as they work through the application

Keeping a user in context means recording state, the state of the user, to some type of data store

This can be done in multiple ways, and no one way is the perfect way Rather, you have to choose

one of the available methods

You can read about maintaining state in an ASP.NET application in Chapter 22.

State can be stored via multiple methods, some of which include:

❑ Application State

❑ Session State

❑ The Cache Object

You use all these methods on the server, but you can also employ your own custom methods — such

as simply storing state in a database using your own custom schema It is also possible to write state

back to the clients, either directly on their computers or by placing state in the HTML output in the

response Some of these methods include:

❑ Querystrings

❑ Hidden Fields

Understanding the Provider

These methods work rather well; but most of them are rudimentary, and have short life spans ASP.NET

3.5 includes a handful of systems (such as the new membership and role management systems) that

handle state for users between multiple requests/response transactions In fact, these systems require

state management capabilities that go well beyond the limited time frames that are possible in the

previously mentioned state management methods Therefore, many of these systems must record state

in more advanced modes — something that is easy to do in ASP.NET 3.5 Recording state to data stores

in more advanced modes is accomplished through the use of providers.

A provider is an object that allows for programmatic access to data stores, processes,

and more.

When working with ASP.NET 1.x, you might have encountered a rudimentary provider model that

was present in the system This provider model was an object that sat between theSessionobject and

the actual place in which the sessions were stored By default, sessions in ASP.NET are storedInProc,

meaning in the same process where ASP.NET is running In ASP.NET 1.x (and in ASP.NET 3.5 for that

matter), you can simply change the provider used for theSessionobject; this will, in turn, change where

the session is stored The available providers for storing session information include:

❑ InProc

❑ StateServer

❑ SQLServer

BesidesInProc, you can useStateServerthat enables you to store sessions in a process that is entirely

separate from the one in which ASP.NET runs This protects your sessions if the ASP.NET process shuts

down You can also store your sessions to disk (in a database for instance) using theSQLServeroption

This method enables you to store your sessions directly in Microsoft’s SQL Server How do you go about

changing the provider that is used for sessions? You can do this in a couple of ways

One option to change the provider used for sessions is through the Internet Information Services (IIS)

Manager, as shown in Figure 12-1

The other option is to go directly to a system-wide configuration file (such as themachine.configfile) or

to an application configuration file (such as theweb.config) In the file, change the name of the session

state provider that is to be used within the<sessionState>section of the configuration document

Figure 12-1

Since ASP.NET 2.0, you have been able to take this provider model one step further than you ever could before You discover this next

The Provider Model in ASP.NET 3.5

Back when ASP.NET 2.0 was being developed, plenty of requests came into the ASP.NET team Users

wanted to be able to store sessions by means other than the three methods —InProc,StateServer,

andSQLServer For instance, one such request was for a provider that could store sessions in an Oracle database This might seem as if it’s a logical thing to add to ASP.NET in the days of ASP.NET 1.1 But if the team added a provider for Oracle, they would soon get requests to add even more providers for other databases and data storage methods For this reason, instead of building providers for each and every

possible scenario, the developers designed a provider model that enabled them to add any providers

they wished Thus, the new provider model found in ASP.NET was born

ASP.NET 3.5 includes a lot of systems that required state storage of some kind Also, instead of record-ing state in a fragile mode (the way sessions are stored by default), many of these systems require that

their state be stored in more concrete data stores such as databases or XML files This also allows a

longer-lived state for the users visiting an application — something else that is required by these systems

The systems based upon the provider model found in ASP.NET 3.5 that require advanced state

management include the following:

❑ Site navigation

❑ Personalization

❑ Health monitoring Web events

❑ Web parts personalization

❑ Configuration file protection

The membership system is a means to allow ASP.NET to work from a user store of some kind to create,

delete, or edit application users Because it is rather apparent that developers want to work with an

unlimited amount of different data stores for their user store, they need a means to change the underlying

user store for their ASP.NET applications easily The provider model found in ASP.NET 3.5 is the answer

Out of the box, ASP.NET 3.5 provides a couple of membership providers that enable you to store user

information The included providers are the SQL Server and the Active Directory membership providers

(found atSystem.Web.Security.SqlMembershipProviderand

System.Web.Security.Active-DirectoryMembershipProvider, respectively) In fact, for each of the systems (as well as for some of

the ASP.NET 1.x systems), a series of providers is available to alter the way the state of that system is

recorded Figure 12-2 illustrates these new providers

SqlPersonalizationProvider

WebParts

Membership

Role

SiteMap Profile

SessionState WebEvents Configuration

SqlMembershipProvider

ActiveRoleMembershipProvider

SqlRoleProvider

WindowsTokenRoleProvider

XmlSiteMapProvider

SqlProfileProvider InProcSessionStateStore

OutOfProcSessionStateStore

SqlSessionStateStore

SimpleMailWebEventProvider

EventLogWebEventProvider

TemplateMailWebEventProvider

SqlWebEventProvider

TraceWebEventProvider

WmiWebEventProvider

RSAProtectedConfigurationProvider

DPAPIPProtectedConfigurationProvider

ActiveDirectoryMembershipProvider

ASP.NET

Figure 12-2

As you can see from the diagram, ASP.NET provides a large number of providers out of the box Some systems have only a single provider (such as the profile system that includes only a provider to connect

to SQL Server), whereas other systems include multiple providers (such as the WebEvents provider that includes six separate providers) Next, this chapter reviews how to set up SQL Server to work with a

number of the providers presented in this chapter You can use SQL Server 7.0, 2000, 2005, or 2008 for the backend data store for many of the providers presented (although not all of them) After this explanation, you review each of the available providers built into ASP.NET 3.5

Setting Up Your Provider to Work with Microsoft

SQL Server 7.0, 2000, 2005, or 2008

Quite a number of providers work with SQL Server For instance, the membership, role management,

personalization, and other systems work with SQL Server right out of the box However, all these systems work with the new Microsoft SQL Server Express Edition file (.mdf) by default instead of with one of the full-blown versions of SQL Server such as SQL Server 7.0, SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005, or SQL

Server 2008

To work with either of these databases, you must set up the database using theaspnet_regsql.exe

tool Working withaspnet_regsql.execreates the necessary tables, roles, stored procedures, and other items needed by the providers To get at this tool, open up the Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt

by selecting Start ➪All Programs ➪Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 ➪Visual Studio Tools ➪Visual Studio

2008 Command Prompt This gives you access to the ASP.NET SQL Server Setup Wizard The ASP.NET SQL Server Setup Wizard is an easy-to-use tool that facilitates setup of the SQL Server to work with

many of the systems that are built into ASP.NET 3.5, such as the membership, role management, and

personalization systems The Setup Wizard provides two ways for you to set up the database: using a

command-line tool or using a GUI tool First, look at the command-line version of the tool

The ASP.NET SQL Server Setup Wizard Command-Line Tool

The command-line version of the Setup Wizard gives the developer optimal control over how the

database is created Working from the command-line using this tool is not difficult, so don’t be

intim-idated by it

You can get at the actual tool,aspnet_regsql.exe, from the Visual Studio Command Prompt if you

have Visual Studio 2008 At the command prompt, typeaspnet_regsql.exe -?to get a list of all the

command-line options at your disposal for working this tool

The following table describes some of the available options for setting up your SQL Server instance to

work with the personalization framework

Command Option Description

-W Uses the Wizard mode This uses the default installation if no other

parameters are used

-S<server> Specifies the SQL Server instance to work with

-U<login> Specifies the username to log in to SQL Server If you use this, you also use

the-Pcommand

Command Option Description

-P<password> Specifies the password to use for logging in to SQL Server If you use

this, you also use the-Ucommand

authentication

-C Specifies the connection string for connecting to SQL Server If you use

this, you can avoid using the-Uand-Pcommands because they are specified in the connection string itself

-A all Adds support for all the available SQL Server operations provided by

ASP.NET 3.5 including membership, role management, profiles, site counters, and page/control personalization

_R all Removes support for all the available SQL Server operations that have

been previously installed These include membership, role management, profiles, site counters, and page/control personalization

-d<database> Specifies the database name to use with the application services If you

don’t specify a name of a database,aspnetdbis used

/sqlexportonly<filename>Instead of modifying an instance of a SQL Server database, use this

command in conjunction with the other commands to generate a SQL script that adds or removes the features specified This command creates the scripts in a file that has the name specified in the command

To modify SQL Server to work with the personalization provider using this command-line tool, you enter

a command such as the following:

aspnet_regsql.exe -A all -E

After you enter the preceding command, the command-line tool creates the features required by all the

available ASP.NET 3.5 systems The results are shown in the tool itself, as you see in Figure 12-3

When this action is completed, you can see that a new database,aspnetdb, has been created in the

Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio, which is part of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (the database used

for this example) You now have the appropriate tables for working with all the ASP.NET 3.5 systems

that are able to work with SQL Server (see Figure 12-4)

One advantage of using the command-line tool rather than the GUI-based version of the ASP.NET SQL

Server Setup Wizard is that you can install in the database just the features that you are interested in

working with instead of installing everything (as the GUI-based version does) For instance, if you are

going to have only the membership system interact with SQL Server 2005 — not any of the other systems

(such as role management and personalization) — then you can configure the setup so that only the

tables, roles, stored procedures, and other items required by the membership system are established in

the database To set up the database for the membership system only, you use the following command

on the command line

aspnet_regsql.exe -A m -E

Figure 12-3

Figure 12-4

The ASP.NET SQL Server Setup Wizard GUI Tool

Instead of working with the tool through the command line, you can also work with a GUI version of the

same wizard To get at the GUI version, type the following at the Visual Studio command prompt:

aspnet_regsql.exe

At this point, the ASP.NET SQL Server Setup Wizard welcome screen appears, as shown in Figure 12-5

Figure 12-5

Clicking Next gives you a new screen that offers two options: one to install management features into

SQL Server and the other to remove them (see Figure 12-6)

From here, choose the Configure SQL Server for application services and click the Next button The

third screen (see Figure 12-7) asks for the login credentials to SQL Server and the name of the database to

perform the operations The Database option is<default>— meaning that the wizard creates a database

calledaspnetdb If you want to choose a different folder, such as the application’s database, choose the

appropriate option

After you have made your server and database selections, click Next The screen shown in Figure 12-8

asks you to confirm your settings If everything looks correct, click Next — otherwise, click Back and

correct your settings

Figure 12-6

When this is complete, you are notified that everything was set up correctly

Connecting Your Default Provider to a New SQL Server Instance

After you set up the full-blown Microsoft SQL Server to work with the various systems provided by

ASP.NET 3.5, you create a connection string to the database in yourmachine.configorweb.configfile This is illustrated in Listing 12-1

Listing 12-1: Changing the connection string in the machine.config.comments or your

web.config file to work with SQL Server 2005

<configuration>

<connectionStrings>

<add name="LocalSqlServer"

connectionString="Data Source=127.0.0.1;Integrated Security=SSPI" />

</connectionStrings>

</configuration>

You may want to change the values provided if you are working with a remote instance of SQL Server

rather than an instance that resides on the same server as the application Changing this value in the

Figure 12-7

machine.configfile changes how each and every ASP.NET application uses this provider Applying this

setting in theweb.configfile causes only the local application to work with this instance

After the connection string is set up, look further in the<providers>section of the section you are

going to work with For instance, if you are using the membership provider, you want to work with the

<membership>element in the configuration file The settings to change the SQL Server are shown in

Listing 12-2

Listing 12-2: Altering the SQL Server used via configuration

<configuration>

<connectionStrings>

<add name="LocalSql2005Server"

connectionString="Data Source=127.0.0.1;Integrated Security=SSPI" />

</connectionStrings>

<system.web>

<membership defaultProvider="AspNetSql2005MembershipProvider">

<providers>