Data access can be accomplished declaratively (without code) using new data source controls. New data source controls can represent different data backends such as SQL and XML, and there are new data-bound controls for rendering common UI for data, such as grids, details, and forms.

These controls provide the building blocks to add authentication and authorization-based UI. For exampl,e, login forms, user forms, password retrieval, and custom UI for logged-in users or roles.

This feature provides the ability to define a common structure for your site, such as a page header, footer, or navigation bar, in a common location, to be shared by many different pages from within your site.

These controls provide a common UI for navigating between pages within your site, such as breadcrumbs, treeviews, and menus.

ASP.NET 2.0 includes 45 new server controls that enable powerful support for data access, login security, wizard navigation, image generation, menus, treeviews, portals ...etc. Many of the new controls take advantage of core application services in ASP.NET for data access, membership and roles, and personalization.

Themes and skins allow for easy customization of a site's look-and-feel. You can define style information in a common location ("theme") and apply that style information globally to pages or controls.

Web Parts is a new family of controls that enable developers to add rich, personalized content and layout to a website, in addition to the ability to edit that content and layout directly from an application page.

.NET Framework 3.5 comes with the addition of Language Integrated Query (LINQ), which facilitates the process of building SQL queries. Complete with compiler and Intellisense support, LINQ makes relational data queries a first-class language construct in C# and Visual Basic.

With .NET 3.5 hosting, what was previously an extension to the ASP.NET runtime, ASP.NET AJAX is now built into the platform and makes the complex task of building cross-platform, standards based AJAX applications that much easy. With ASP.NET AJAX, developers can quickly create pages with sophisticated user interfaces and efficient client-server communication by adding a few server controls to their pages.

New ListView control provides flexibility in displaying data, by enabling complete control over the HTML markup generated. In addition, the DataPager control can handle large-record page-throughs.

With .NET Framework 3.5 hosting, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) supports building Web services that can be exposed using standard protocols, such as SOAP, RSS, JSON, POX and more.

Our ASP.NET hosting platform is Silverlight compatible. Microsoft® Silverlight™ is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive Web applications. Silverlight offers a flexible programming that supports AJAX, VB, and C#, and integrates with existing Web applications. We posted some links in our Community Forum (see below) to demonstrate Silverlight applications using the Official Silverlight 1.0 Release and the Alpha 1.1 and RC 1.0 version. The silverlight demo applications are hosted in a test account on our ASP.NET hosting platform to show that DiscountASP.NET is Silverlight compatible.