Hi Imar,

The opening text in Ch 17 cautions that the profile feature doesn't work in Web Application Projects. That raises a few questions/requests for confirmation:

1 - Please confirm that the Provider features of Membership, Role Manager and Session State (not sure what this is yet) function the same in Application Projects as they do in Website Projects.

2 - Is there an easy explanation why Profile doesn't work in Application Projects?

3 - Will we learn in the Professional ASP.NET 4.5 : in C# and VB book how to perform the profile task in an Application Project?

4 - It is clear from the progress of the exercises in this book that the Website Project was far easier to work with for this purpose. But it seems if we want to have a more controlled and automatic process for managing a website we will need to use the Application Project. Do you agree with this or have some other considerations to add regarding the decision to use Application versus Website Projects?

Thanks.

Best Regards,
Alan

Hi Alan,

1) Yes, those all work exactly the same.

2) Short version: web sites use run-time compilation and as such your specific Profile can be compiled into the Page class. Web Application Project compile at design time.

3) I don't know.

4) It depends on what you mean with "controlled and automatic process". You can certainly build web sites in a controlled and automatic way as well, using things like TFS for source control, the Web Publish Wizard (that is now available in VS 2013 for Web Site Projects) and more.

Cheers,

Imar

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Imar Spaanjaars
http://Imar.Spaanjaars.Com
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Author of Beginning ASP.NET 4.5 : in C# and VB, Beginning ASP.NET Web Pages with WebMatrix
and Beginning ASP.NET 4 : in C# and VB.
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Hi Imar,

Thanks. Especially the reminder about source control, etc.

Before your course I would have thought I needed to use a Web Application Project, but now I think for starting up, the Website Project will be significantly more time efficient and still afford most of what is needed to maintain good control of the site for some time to come. It also doesn't seem worth it to complicate the Profile capability early on since, as you point out, profiles are so important to a good UX.

Best Regards,
Alan