Having seen in outline how ASP+ is now an integral part of the operating system, we need to look at the other aspect. How, and why, is ASP+ different to earlier version of ASP? And just how different is it? Well, if you just want to run existing pages and applications, you probably won't notice the differences much at all. However, once you open up the ASP+ SDK or Help files, you'll see a whole new vista of stuff that doesn't look the least bit familiar.

Don't panic! We'll work through the main differences next. We'll start with a look at why Microsoft has decided that we need a new version of ASP, and how it will help you, as a developer, to meet the needs of the future when creating Web sites and applications. We'll follow this with a checklist of the major new features of ASP+, then examine each one in a little more detail. The remainder of the book then covers the new features one by one, explaining how you can use them.