A New Web for .NET

A number of things have been happening these last few years in the .NET community in relation to the Web. Specifically, OpenRasta and FubuMvc demonstrated 1) new approaches to web development in a static-typed world and 2) that other developers were growing tired of the existing options. Since then a host of new micro-frameworks, generally inspired by the Ruby dynamic duo of Rack and Sinatra, have popped up on github. In addition, several new server options have begun cropping up, most notably Kayak and Manos de Mono, both of which use an event loop a la node.js and primarily targeting Mono.

Microsoft has not be sitting idly by either. The WCF team is working on a new Web API to provide WCF developers simpler, more direct control over HTTP services. This is no slouch effort either. In fact, aside from OpenRasta, it may be the most thorough HTTP implementation available.

While exciting on their own, the best news, imho, is the .NET HTTP Abstractions group, started by Scott Koon. This group has been working on a standard, currently called Open Web Interface for .NET (OWIN). It’s intent is to define a common interface by which any application can talk to any server. The idea comes from the Web Server Gateway Interface (Python) and Rack. The primary difference in this and other similar specs is the inclusion of asynchronous network I/O as a primary concern. Discussions are still underway and include nearly all of the developers of the aforementioned projects, as well as some members of the ASP.NET team.

Read more: Wizards of Smart

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