[Mono-list] Re: Running .NET

[Robert Deviasse]

> > If we have developed a couple of asp.net applications with microsofts 
>visual studio.net ...
> > is it then possible to run these applications under linux? (In the 
>future?)

>A few of us are working on ASP.NET for Mono+Apache. So, in the future it
>should be posible.

Have you looked at XSP?
   http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2001/02/22/jsp_servlets.html
   http://xml.apache.org/cocoon/xsp.html
   http://www.plenix.org/xsp/doc/xsp-primer.html

I've looked at both ASP.NET and XSP, and superficially, I can see only
four key differences.
1) While both JVM and ASP.NET support multiple languages, ASP.NET
   supports them through the CLR while XSP supports them through
   through the Bean Scripting Framework:
      http://www-124.ibm.com/developerworks/projects/bsf
   and through the Windows scripting interface (if you're on Windows).

2) The reference implementation of XSP, Cocoon, doesn't seem to allow
   compiled web pages like ASP.NET does. XSP pages should thus be
   slower.

3) XSP is undergoing W3 standardization whereas ASP.NET get's enhanced
   at Microsoft's whim.

4) Through Visual Studio.NET, ASP.NET implements a really nice drag and
   drop tool for creating ASP.NET pages. No such tool exists for XSP.

In all other ways, each seems to have features that available in the
other.

Let's go through these items one at a time.
1) This seems to be a limitation of the current reference
   implementation, Cocoon. There's no reason Cocoon couldn't be
   rewritten for the CLR. Since Java an C# are so similar,
   reimplementing Cocoon in the C# will be a lot easier than
   reverse engineering ASP.NET. I know that OpenASP was created
   once, but I can't find any source code to it now, so
   there's little code or design that can be reused to reimplement
   ASP.NET.

2) This seems to be a limitation of the current reference
   implementation. The Apache group is working on Cocoon2 that gets
   rid of many of the limitations of XSP, but I don't think they've
   fixed this. Personally, I don't see why it's impossible to create
   XSLT transformations on XSP to translate XSP pages into CLR code.
   Even if XSLT can't handle the job, GSP (http://gsp.sourceforge.net)
   is proof of concept that precompiling HTML (and thus XML) pages to
   any language as either CGI or an Apache/IIS extension is possible.

3) This means XSP is easier to implement than ASP.NET. My fear is that
   ASP.NET for Mono developers would be in a Samba-like/WINE-like
   situation of chasing moving target that's not under the control of
   free software or at least some standards body. MonoBasic, Gtk#, and
   ECMA C# & CLR aren't exposed as much to these problems because the
   success of these projects isn't determined by one a single company's
   whims.

4) This is a tough one. It should be possible to write an ASP.NET to XSP
   translator so XSP pages could indirectly be made in Visual
   Studio.NET, but this is clearly a big kludge. The real solution to
   enhance SharpDevelop so it handles XSP pages.

I have been planning to work on some sort of C# support for XSP (using
the GSP approach), but unfortunately because of unforseen
circumstances, I won't be able to do much beyond research before next
February.

Please take a look at XSP. If you need any more information, let me know.



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