{"id":744,"date":"2014-02-18T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-02-18T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/webdev\/2014\/02\/18\/introducing-asp-net-project-helios\/"},"modified":"2014-02-18T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-02-18T10:00:00","slug":"introducing-asp-net-project-helios","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/dotnet\/introducing-asp-net-project-helios\/","title":{"rendered":"Introducing ASP.NET Project \u201cHelios\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

In late 2013 we made available a prerelease NuGet package which allows running a managed web application directly on top of IIS without going through the normal ASP.NET (System.Web) request processing pipeline. This was a relatively quiet event without too much fanfare. At last month\u2019s MVA Windows Azure Deep Dive<\/a>, we spoke about this for the first time publicly to a global audience.<\/p>\n

Today, I\u2019d like to give a formal introduction to ASP.NET Project \u201cHelios\u201d. This post will talk about why we\u2019re introducing this project, what we hope to accomplish with it, and how this might fit in to our ecosystem moving forward.<\/p>\n

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I assume that the reader has a basic understanding of OWIN and ASP.NET Project Katana. If you are not familiar with these, a brief overview can be found at <\/em>http:\/\/www.asp.net\/aspnet\/overview\/owin-and-katana\/an-overview-of-project-katana<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The world today<\/h2>\n

Prescriptive behaviors<\/h2>\n

ASP.NET is an \u201ceverything and the kitchen sink\u201d programming model. It\u2019s very prescriptive, and developers are pushed to follow its recommended coding patterns. This makes it great for quickly designing and deploying LOB web applications, which was ASP.NET\u2019s original intended audience. However, over the years frameworks like MVC, WebAPI, and SignalR have come online, and developers have begun writing more complex applications following newer standards. These applications don\u2019t fit nicely into the LOB model which made ASP.NET famous. And while ASP.NET certainly allows writing this style of modern application, the simple truth is that the framework\u2019s prescriptive patterns don\u2019t always lend themselves to this style of application. Sometimes these behaviors are downright intrusive. Developers can end up spending a significant amount of time cajoling the framework into meeting their needs.<\/p>\n

Below are some sample behaviors which made sense when they were first implemented, but nowadays they are a large source of complaints from our developer base:<\/p>\n