01_78544x ffirs.qxp 7/18/06 3:11 PM Page iii Beginning Ajax with ASP.NET Wallace B. McClure, Scott Cate, Paul Glavich, Craig Shoemaker 01_78544x ffirs.qxp 7/18/06 3:11 PM Page ii 01_78544x ffirs.qxp 7/18/06 3:11 PM Page i Beginning Ajax with ASP.NET 01_78544x ffirs.qxp 7/18/06 3:11 PM Page ii 01_78544x ffirs.qxp 7/18/06 3:11 PM Page iii Beginning Ajax with ASP.NET Wallace B. McClure, Scott Cate, Paul Glavich, Craig Shoemaker 01_78544x ffirs.qxp 7/18/06 3:11 PM Page iv Beginning Ajax with ASP.NET Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc. 10475 Crosspoint Boulevard Indianapolis, IN 46256 www.wiley.com Copyright © 2006 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana Published simultaneously in Canada ISBN-13: 978-0-471-78544-6 ISBN-10: 0-471-78544-X Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 1B/QT/QY/QW/IN Library of Congress Control Number: 2006016507 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sec- tions 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Pub- lisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600. 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Trademarks:Wiley, the Wiley logo, Wrox, the Wrox logo, Programmer to Programmer, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates, in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Wiley Publishing, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. 01_78544x ffirs.qxp 7/18/06 3:11 PM Page v Credits Executive Editor Vice President and Executive Publisher Bob Elliott Joseph B. Wikert Senior Development Editor Graphics and Production Specialists Kevin Kent Carrie A. Foster Lauren Goddard Technical Editor Joyce Haughey Steven A. Smith Barbara Moore Heather Ryan Production Editor Alicia B.South Pamela Hanley Quality Control Technicians Copy Editor John Greenough Foxxe Editorial Services Brian Walls Editorial Manager Project Coordinator Mary Beth Wakefield Jennifer Theriot Production Manager Proofreading and Indexing Tim Tate Techbooks Vice President and Executive Group Publisher Richard Swadley 01_78544x ffirs.qxp 7/18/06 3:11 PM Page vi For my wife, Ronda, my two children, Kirsten and Bradley, and the rest of my family. —Wallace B. McClure My contribution to this project is dedicated to my newborn son, Cameron. I’d like to thank Michael Schwarz both for authoring the Ajax.NET Professional library and for his research assistance, as well asall of the myKB.com staff, who were very helpful and supportive of this project. Special thanks go toLorin Thwaits, who helped me with research and provided several great ideas for my chapters. —Scott Cate To my wonderful wife Michele for her enduring love and patience; my three children, Kristy, Marc, and Elizabeth, for being so lovable and great people; my two grandchildren, Olivia and William, for just being themselves; my loving parents for all their support; and everyone else I have met on the way to getting where I am, good or bad, thank you for helping me get here. —Paul Glavich I dedicate this work first to God, then my Peachy, TyRy, Zachy-zoo, and baby Jacob—who started to make his appearance as I write this text. —Craig Shoemaker For Michelle, for putting up with me longer than anybody should have to do so. —Steven A. Smith 01_78544x ffirs.qxp 7/18/06 3:11 PM Page vii About the Authors Wallace B. “Wally” McCluregraduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1990 with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering. He continued his education there, receiving a master’s degree in the same field in 1991. Since that time, he has done consulting and development for such organizations as The United States Department of Education, Coca-Cola, Bechtel National, Magnatron, and Lucent Technologies, among others. Products and services have included work with ASP, ADO, XML, and SQL Server, as well as numerous applications in the Microsoft .NET Framework. Wally has been working with the .NET Framework since the summer of 2000. Wally McClure specializes in building applications that have large numbers of users and large amounts of data. He is a Microsoft MVPand an ASPInsider, and a partner in Scalable Development, Inc. You can read Wally’s blog at http://weblogs.asp.net/wallym. Wally and coauthor Paul Glavich also co-host the ASP.NET Podcast. You can listen to it at www.aspnet podcast.com. In addition, Wally travels around the southeast United States doing user group talks and sessions at various CodeCamps. When not working or playing with technology, Wally tries to spend time with his wife Ronda and their two children, Kirsten and Bradley. Occasionally, Wally plays golf and on July 30, 2005, broke par on a real golf course for the first time in his life. If he hadn’t been there, he would not have believed it. Scott Cateis the President of myKB.com, Inc., in Scottsdale, Arizona. myKB.com, Inc., is a technology com- pany specializing in commercial ASP.NET applications. His product line includes myKB.com (knowledge base software), kbAlertz.com (Microsoft knowledge base notifications), and EasySearchASP.net (a plug- gable search engine for ASP.NET sites). Scott also runs AZGroups.com (Arizona .NET user groups), one of the largest and most active user group communities in the country, and is a member of ASPInsiders.com, a group devoted to giving early feedback to the Microsoft ASP.NET team. In addition, Scott has coauthored the novel Surveillance, which can be found at http://surveillance-the-novel.com. Paul Glavichis currently an ASP.NET MVPand works as a senior technical consultant for Readify. He has over 15 years of industry experience ranging from PICK, C, C++, Delphi, and Visual Basic 3/4/5/6 to his current specialty in .NET C++ with C#, COM+, and ASP.NET. Paul has been developing in .NET technologies since .NET was first in beta and was technical architect for one of the world’s first Internet banking solutions using .NET technology. Paul can be seen on various .NET related newsgroups, has presented at the Sydney .NET user group (www.sdnug.org) and is also a board member of ASPInsiders (www.aspinsiders.com). He has also written some technical articles that can be seen on community sites, such as ASPAlliance.com (www.aspalliance.com). On a more personal note, Paul is married with three children and two grandkids, and holds a third degree black belt in budo-jitsu. Craig Shoemakercan’t sit still. As the host of the Polymorphic Podcast (polymorphicpodcast.com), Craig teaches on topics as timely as software architecture and as cutting edge as the latest Ajax technolo- gies. Whether he’s writing for CoDe Magazine, ASPAlliance, or DotNetJunkies or speaking at local user groups, Southern California Code Camp, or VSLive!, Craig loves to share his passion for the art and sci- ence for software development. Craig is also a full-time software engineer for Microsoft Certified Partner PDSA, Inc. (pdsa.com) in Tustin, California.