Tutorials

The Database Connection page is the first page you will see after creating a new project. This page allows you to specify your data provider and connection string. We will be using Microsoft SQL Server 2008. Select your data provider from the list, and press the “…” button to compose a connection string.

Enter your server name, credentials, and enter “Northwind” in the Database field.

A typical project will start with selection of an existing database. For this example, we will create a new one. Press Create to the right of Database field, confirm the creation, and the database will be created.

Under Sample Tables, select Northwind from the dropdown. Press Install, and confirm. This will install Northwind sample into the specified database.

You can monitor the progress in the log at the bottom. The web app generator will notify you upon completion.

Let’s create a baseline Code On Time Web Site Factory application. Run the web app generator, and select Web Site Factory project type.

Web Site Factory project type is based on a directory structure. Files will be compiled upon saving to the hard drive. Web Site Factory is suitable for an application of any complexity and is the easiest to manage. If you’re starting web development or coming to ASP.NET from other technologies, then this is the project type for you.

In the Name field, enter “OrderForm”. This will be the name of the folder that stores the project, and will be the display name shown on the start page of the code generator. Select the programming language of your choice, and press Create.

On the next page, you can enter the Namespace, which will be used throughout the whole application. The namespace is a prefix used in all classes of the generated code base. We’ll leave the default name “MyCompany”. You can also change the Framework to either .NET 3.5 or 4.0. The latter is suggested, as it has better performance.