In VS2008 what is the difference between Web Site and Web Application?

Question

In VS2008 what is the difference between Web Site and Web Application? And are there advantages to using either one?

Answer 1

Before you talk about the pros and cons, you would have to know the fundamental difference on how it works.

Web Site Projects use a just in time compilation approach which would dynamically compiles your aspx and related file when your page is actually visited. The compiled assembly is then being placed inside the bin folder with a random generated dll name.

Web Application, on the other hand, compiles the page into a named dll at the time you develop the project. Without this compilation the website won't even deploy into your server (as there is no auto compile mechanism)

So the pros and cons:

1. Web Site project's source are dynamic, you don't necessary need to go thru your development machine to modify something (risky approach though), everything are compiled just in time
2. Having said this is convenient, it also has a slight performance penalty due to the JIT compilation involved.
3. There are some projects just WONT run on Web Site project due to the design of the dispatching request, like ASP.NET MVC and MonoRail based projects.
4. You have little or no possibility to TDD your Web Site project in library level because its not compiled. You can however TDD your single DLL compiled with Web Application.
5. I forgot how that is being triggered but VS2005 can take forever long to compile a bigger Web Site project due to the dynamic nature involves additional syntax checking for the aspx files. Web Application does not suffer from this issue.

I am sure there are a lot more stuffs involved, but I think these are some of the bigger ones.

Answer 2

Web site Primarily for working with ad-hoc web sites that have programmed elements. Easily identified by customer-specific content present in aspx files.

No solution or project files are required and the pages and source can reside locally (file system, IIS) or remotely (FTP, WebDev/FrontPage extensions) via the File > Open > Web Site... menu option.

Code-behind and classes are typically stored on the web server which compiles them in-memory on demand. Changes can be made to the files without restarting the application and losing sessions.

For/Against

• Quick edit, test, deploy cycle Syntax errors at runtime
• No need to compile or restart app Can't create an installer
• Source always available Source on server useful to hackers

Web application Web application projects were introduced as an add-on for Visual Studio 2005, later rolled in to VS 2005 SP1 and made a full first-class citizen with Visual Studio 2008.

Like the name implies these are primarily for web applications, those times when you have written a product or solution that happens to have a web interface.

Web application projects exist on your local drive and are treated like any other VS project type and can be added to existing solutions are subject to full compilation, validation and build steps.

Deployment is typically via MSI installers however you can also utilise the addition Web Deployment Projects add-in which allows you to deployment directly to servers which is useful for deploying to test environments.

For/Against

• Controlled build & deploy process Deployment causes application restart
• No class files on web server, dll only Can't deploy individual classes
• Syntax errors at compile time

http://damieng.com/blog/2008/02/07/web-site-vs-web-application