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C# vs ASP in developing a web application

I have a coursework which requires me to do the following :
Make a website which can retrieve data from application db
Create three data repositories (two as application db and one as data warehouse)
Ensure that the two application db can sync their data with the data warehouse
I have intermediate knowledge in Java programming but I am thinking that I would like to try developing this in another language. Here is what I was planning to use (and also my confusion)
I am planning to use IIS to host the databases on multiple computers and I decided to use ASP.NET as my programming language for website and C# as its backend but I am confused about the relationship between ASP/ASP.NET and C#. It seems to me that having ASP/ASP.NET/ASP.NET-MVC is sufficient to build the whole thing without needing C#. Can someone please explain the differences to me? I am still at lost after reading about them the whole morning.

Well,
The difference are lot. Please learn this below links.
ASP is a old version
ASP.NET is advanced version than ASP
ASP.NET MVC is more advanced version than ASP.NET
You can click the above link for a difference.
also see this below discussion for
Relationship between C#, .NET, ASP, ASP.NET etc
the answer have:
I understand your confusion, believe me I have the same perspective when it comes to the Java world! Anyway I'll attempt to break your questions down and tackle them one by one... as well as add some other points in that will hopefully help clarify what's going on:
C# and C#.NET are the same thing... C#
.NET is, as you say, a library of code that .NET languages can talk to.
.NET languages come in different flavours such as: C#.NET, VB.NET, Managed C++, F#.
.NET languages compile to CIL (Common Intermediate Language) which means they all start "talking" the same language and can therefore interoperate.
ASP.NET is the portion of the .NET library used for making web sites. There are other subsections of ASP.NET like WebForms (the old way of making web pages) or the rapidly maturing MVC library that are worth looking at too.
Forms (old tech) or the new WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) are the technologies you'd typically use in .NET to create what you know as traditional desktop applications.
One final thing I'd like to finish on is the difference between library and framework. In recent years these two terms have been used as those synonymous, however that is not the case. The easiest way I can think to differentiate the two is:
A library contains many pieces of functionality that you may pick and choose from i.e. using one piece of technology doesn't mean you're locked into the rest. This means freedom, however you will have more work cut out for you.
A framework however very much sets out how you will be working be providing a workflow that for better or worse is hard to change. This means rapid development/prototyping, but if significant changes are made in the future it may be impossible (or very time consuming) to implement them.
The project you're working on will depend on which choice you make.

Why doesn't PHP need a middle tier, where as other languages do

For web based applications, why doesn't PHP need middleware to run - yet languages like Java, C#, etc do?
UPDATE:
Re-worded: Why doesn't PHP need a middle tier, or business layer separating it from the database, whereas the others do.

Assuming that by the term "middleware" you mean "a middle tier", or "a business layer" the answer is that none of them need it.
For example, there is nothing to stop you in C# (or more correctly, on the .Net Framework "stack") from writing code in web pages that directly accesses the database. Indeed, lots of prototypes start out this way.
The issue here is more around good practice - it is generally considered A Bad Thing(tm) to write web pages (sticking with the same example) that directly access the database and the reasons for this are many. Testability, security, good decoupled code - all these require you to separate your code out, and having several tiers is a natural way to do this.
Why do you not see as much of this with PHP? I think Jeff's latest blog post covers this well :)
I'd go as far as to say that C# (the language), .Net (the Framework), ASP.NET (especially ASP.NET MVC) and much of the documentation and tutorials encourage you to do the right thing and not punch a whole from the web page through to the database.
But there isn't actually anything stopping you from doing it.

The use case that can appear is the following:
You have multiple web apps serving data that is stored in a database. Let's say the web apps are:
Front-end for your desktop web experience
Front-end for your mobile web experience
Front-end for your APIs that you expose to developers
Let's say each front-end accesses the database directly. Then, your eng team decides that the current database should be replaced. Now you have the problem of rewriting code in every front-end.
If you had a middle tier to abstract the actual data store, you'd only re-write one layer of code. Additionally, having unit tests for that middle tier would ensure that the way the middle tier exposes data remains uniform, regardless of the data storage platform.

How to render a 3D model/graphic of a building in a ASP.Net MVC webapplication

I am researching the possibility to render a 3D model or graphic from a building described by data in a ASP.Net MVC webapplication (C#).
Most posts on forums and on stackoverflow and articles on blogs and websites I find about things related are old (2006 and before).
As far as I can tell there are three choices: Direct3D, OpenGL and Unity 3D.
Direct3D is from MS but I can't figure out whether this is suitable for a webapplication or not. Any experience anyone? But as stated before, the highest ranked articles in google are from 2006 or earlier (is it still being developed/maintained/used?).
OpenTK (www.opentk.com) looks the likely candidate for use of OpenGL but the latest release is from October 2006 (although there are recent blog posts on their website).
Unity 3D seems very advanced, modern and recently maintained, however I am uncertain whether it is not to bulky to render a simple 3D model of a building.
I would welcome any suggestions whether one or the other is better suited for the task and preferably examples of implementation.
Cheers,
Daniël

I think you might be misunderstanding how this process works.
I assume that you want to render the object on the client?
In that case you need to look at a client-side technology. ASP.Net or any other server-side platform can pass the data to the client but you need to use a client-side technology to do that.
I don't know exactly where this stands right now but I would expect you to need to use Silverlight, Flash or possibly HTML5 for the display.
HTML5 is standards compliant but it is less mature and as far as I know you will need a fairly new browser to access it: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh535759(v=vs.85).aspx
Silverlight is more mature, should integrate naturally with your Microsoft toolset but will require users to install the plug-in before they can use your tool. I don't know how ubiquitous it is, but that may be an issue for you. I would still probably favour this if you want quicker/more achievable development time: http://forums.silverlight.net/t/225673.aspx/1
Flash is very ubiquitious but you will need proprietary tools to develop it and I don't know how/whether it would integrate with the Microsoft stack. I think they would prefer you to use their own stuff. It's good if you want something available on most current browsers but my feeling ( and if I'm honest my hope ) is that it will lose currency as HTML5 takes over.
Of course, if you're properly old school like it's 1998 you should totally go for VRML.
As regards the server platform you use, that's basically irrelevant to rendering and display. It's role will be to pass out data. If you are using a Windows server then you probably want to look at something WCF to pass the data out to your client.
If, you want to render your objects on the server and then use those renderings to create images or video on the client that is a slightly different matter again.

Google AngularJS Framework - Worth the risk?

I have been asked to build a small web application for one of our clients and think it might be a good opportunity to try out a different framework for building web applications. Most of the applications we build are based on asp.net web forms and we have no yet done anything in an MVC architecture but I am eager to start building web applications in a more structured manner with the right tools.
I have been researching things like asp.net MVC and the likes which look quite good but I am wondering is there anything to be said for using something like the Google AngularJS Framework.
If possible I would still like to be able to write my server side code using c# and I have not researched AngularJS enough to know if this is even possible, although I assume I could use web services.
Has anyone had any experience with developing an app using AngularJS and if so, how was it and can you point me in the right direction for some tutorials?

We have been developing a port of a Swing fat-client application in AngularJS for the last couple of months and I think it is worth recommending. As far as learning resources go, check out the official project site (and be sure to read the tutorial) and the mailing list (the authors are very helpful).
The good stuff:
great testability
the two-way data binding is a very powerful feature, and it can be extremely helpful once you "get it"
IMO the AngularJS templates are much less brittle than using data- attributes or "special" CSS classes to mark elements that do something
it greatly reduces the need for using jquery plugins, because implementing that functionality in AngularJS is very easy (stuff like trees, tabs, accordions, etc.)
The bad stuff:
the learning curve seems pretty steep (I didn't have much of a problem, but I've seen some people struggle with it)
validations in AngularJS suck for the time being (a new implementation is on the way)
not all libraries/jquery plugins play nicely with Angular and usually you have to wrap them
the API is still being polished, so expect breaking changes (not a big problem with frequent releases and very good changelog, though)
performance is OK up until several thousand bindings on a page - most of the time this is not a limitation, but there are cases when this could be a problem.
Some pointers (if you ever decide to learn AngularJS):
some people really overuse widgets. In my experience, it's much better to use HTML "partials" + services, and only use widgets sporadically.
read source code of the library - it's the best place to learn stuff about angular
no DOM manipulation in services/controllers
if you use css classes to bind to events, you are doing it wrong

+1 #psycho's answer
AngularJS is client-side framework, so you can use any language on the server. It's designed to work well together with jQuery, with big emphasis on testing...
Here are some resources you might find useful:
TUTORIAL: http://docs.angularjs.org/#!/tutorial
API DOCS: http://docs.angularjs.org/#!/api
Developer Guide: http://docs.angularjs.org/#!/guide
Some example apps:
http://cburgdorf.github.com/angular-todo-app
http://www.fluid.ie/angular/calculate/
http://hookercookerman.github.com/angularjs-todos/
http://paul-hammant.github.com/StoryNavigator/navigator.html
Adapter for SenchaTouch: https://github.com/tigbro/sencha-touch-angular-adapter
Adapter for jQ Mobile: https://github.com/tigbro/jquery-mobile-angular-adapter
Feel free to ask any question on mailing list !
We are still in beta, but there are already several internal apps at Google, powered by AngularJS.
UPDATE (26th July 2012):
AngularJS v1.0 has been released.
For some public AngularJS-powered apps, check out http://builtwith.angularjs.org

IMHO developing something for a client which they may have difficulty supporting is unprofessional. You have to bear in mind that it will be difficult for your client to hire experienced Angular professionals, or train their own people to climb that "steep learning curve". Also, so far the documentation is not that great. Can you easily, in a few moments, answer the question, "How can I connect my shiny Angular app to my client's database?" Can your client sometime in the future easily grab some existing code and adapt it to their potential future needs? Be honest.
Compare plain old reliable LAMP development to Angular. For a "small web application" I really believe that a professional should give his client something maintainable and simple.
It's not to say that Angular isn't cool and sexy etc etc. But you have your client's future maintainability to think about in addition to the latest framework fad. Tread lightly would be my recommendation. Build your own website with Angular first and see what you think before you bestow your fabulous new skills on some trusting client.

I remember reading this SO thread couple of months back with same question in my mind, and we decided to go ahead with AngularJS, and the best decision we made on this project yet.
We are using AngularJS + ASP.NET MVC4 REST WebAPI.
Most probalbly after such a nice client side Javascript MVC framework, you would only need REST API layer interacting with Business Logic Layer at server side, and no MVC at server Side (ASP.NET MVC/Spring/Structs would feel like old memories).
You will find Angular-UI good add-on (esp ng-grid)
Soon after our project finishes, we might put some of our directive we wrote for open source world.

I have been researching the merits of AngularJS for many months to utilize as a core framework for product I am creating.
There are many aspects of AJS that make it worth while to learn. Yes there is a bit of a learning curve but its well worth it, especially if you wish to have more control on client side capability.
JQuery manipulates the DOM at run time, whereas AJS situates itself within the JS rendering lifecycle. This allows you to teach the DOM new tricks by creating your HTML Elements and Attributes. This is very, very powerful. As what you are able to do is introduce new Element behaviors for whatever your purpose and need. In AJS these custom HTML Attributes/Elements are called Directives. With the ability to craft your own Directives, you are able to build functionality that the current HTML doesn't have, pushing out capabilities that will run on all modern browsers now and into the future. Of the many approaches to inducing new behavior, AJS appears to be the safest direction one could take due to how they have chosen to implement it.
There is a huge performance gain over JQuery in AJS.
I love the simplicity of the two-way data binding, and the separation of concerns in their client side MVC pattern, which as pointed out above provide great testability. There scope object is the glue between the View (HTML), the Model (your Data) and your custom Controllers. The scope provides access to parent attributes and can be isolated at the sibling level, which is important for some reusable templates.
Templates can created and reused across your application which can contain 0 or more custom directives.
I have been using frameworks such as PRISM and MEF but I am finding that AJS has most of the same features that exist in these .NET frameworks but in a 29K footprint. There is rumors that they are working on lazy-loading which if provided will provide for some very interesting LOB type capabilities.
There are a number of UI frameworks that are being built for AJS but you can wrap any 3rd party control lib as needed, given a bit of effort. The trick is to ensure that when these 3rd party controls have changes induced, that you ensure AJS is properly notified using their apply method.
If you combine AJS with MS TypeScript within VS 2012, it provides the ability to manage and build some very impressive projects which will work well for those who are more comfortable with projects within VS.
There are a ton of other reasons to look at AJS, but if you are considering frameworks such as KnockOut I'd highly recommend AJS instead, regardless of it's perceived learning curve. Knockout is a library, AJS is a framework.

So far i think Google's Angular is great. Particular like the databinding and dependency injection.
For other js framework, there are knockout.js , backbone.js etc.
here are some posts:
angular.js example in backbone.js and/or knockout.js

I realise this post is old and you haven't gone with Angular, but I have a similar background to you, and I'm at the same point as you when asking the question.
So for the benefit of future visitors, some of the "risks" and links to resources I've found useful...
As many have already mentioned, Angular can have a very steep learning curve "Not only me, but co-workers that I consider highly smart developers, have struggled with some of the basic concepts" AngularJS is amazing... and hard as hell (link also has some good tutorial links which you asked for), and the version 2 stuff is looking more like java, which wouldn't have been a problem with your C# background, in my opinion Directives are hard enough to understand without verbose annotations and so on.
Angular performance can be poor in some cases, especially when using ng-repeat on a large number of elements Considering Speed and Slowness in AngularJS and Scaylr's experience. Other's have mentioned that performance really degrades over ~2000 bound elements, but that's usually met with arguments about how any app with more than that many elements probably isn't a good app. Keep it in mind though if you have legitimate use cases which call for many bound objects.
Angular is popular in terms of contributors, but ranks way way behind, say, jQuery in terms of production usage. Finding Angular developers might be tough, and jQuery or other developers converting have that "steep learning curve" to deal with.
Because Angular is young, you have no guarantee that it'll gain enough traction for your new Angular skills to be employable, and your new application not to quickly become legacy code
In v1.2 Angular doesn't support IE7 and below and v1.3 will drop IE8. For >=IE9, you need to follow some special coding practices.
The many javascript widgets, plugins and libraries which you might be used to using can't be used properly with Angular without heavy modification and people often suggest to re-write your component in Angular anyway.
UPDATE March 2014: after 2 months attempting to build a non-trivial densely functional one page app: There are many versions of Angular, and it's hard to say which is the best or most stable. It will depend on what you're coding with it. I'm finding some bugs Angular that are fixed by upgrading to a later version and others fixed by regressing to an earlier one. I've never had to go version shopping like this with jQuery.
UPDATE May 2014: Young, broken tools. Batarang is great until it doesn't work. I can't trust it until they fix this one.
And finally, the three best resources I've found for learning this stuff
Todd Motto's ultimate guide, and
UPDATE April 2014: this eBook chapter is quite amazing. I didn't buy the rest of the book yet, but the concept is fantastic
A full non-trivial app written in Angular (the accompanying book is OK, but doesn't really talk about the non-trivial app enough, as they appear to be saying advertised on their site)

I would say yes to this and check out John Papa's hottowel implementation as a way to do it.

Lightweight .NET web development?

I'm currently working on a project that has a sizable amount of both client and web code. The client code is written in C# and the web piece is written in PHP. Maintaining consistency between the two worlds is becoming cumbersome, and I want to consolidate the web code to .Net.
The issue is that I hate web development in ASP.Net Web Forms. I want something as raw as PHP, just using C# instead. I've read a little about ASP.Net MVC, but it looks like it abstracts too much of the request logic for my liking.
Does anyone know of a lightweight way to allow C# + .Net to handle web requests? Should I be looking more closely at MVC?
Update: I went with ASP.Net MVC and I've been very pleased so far.

If you're looking to get away from ASP.NET Web Forms, the I recommend ASP.NET MVC with a custom view engine (like Spark, or NHaml). This will give you the consolidation your looking for and allow you to avoid most of the Web Forms that your not happy with.
AFAIK, to do .NET web development, you are going to have to interact with ASP.NET in some form or another, but the custom view engines in MVC could be exactly the abstraction your looking for.

It is now possible to use a software stack completely separate to IIS and ASP.Net using Kyak, Nancy and Gate.
http://bvanderveen.com/a/gate-0.1.0/

You might want to check out Kayak, which is, to my knowledge, the only standalone .NET web development framework that's not ASP.NET.
Caveat: Kayak's request handling implementation is not the best, so there may be performance or scaling issues. I can't say for sure -- I've only read it, not run it.
Edit: I've taken another look at the source code, and it looks like they've rewritten a significant portion of their server code, and in doing so fixed the major issues. Performance probably won't be a problem.

MVC.NET is open source, so you can make it do what you want. It is a framework that is overrideable, extensible, etc. I'd look closer at it. It works great for me and I've come from a background of CGI, Struts and Webwork. I love it.

In my opinion nothing is more lightweight than the combination of NancyFX (http://nancyfx.org/) with Dapper (https://github.com/SamSaffron/dapper-dot-net) for data access.
NancyFX can be hosted within ASP.NET, WCF, Azure, OWIN-compatible environments, Umbraco or you can write your own host.
Read also these articles:
http://theothersideofcode.com/lightweight-development-in-dot-net-nancy
http://theothersideofcode.com/lightweight-data-access-in-dot-net-massive
I also suggest you to TinyIoC (https://github.com/grumpydev/TinyIoC) for decouple your application layers.
Regards,
Giacomo

You should look into the IHttpHandler and IHttpModule interfaces. These are the foundations for ASP.NET WebForms. Brad Wilson has a good intro to the former.
In the bad days when WebForms was the way to do ASP.NET development I was writing my own simple MVC framework with these interfaces. The bit I struggled with at the time was the View engine but now there are a number of these.
You take a closer look at ASP.NET MVC since the source is available and decide for yourself. It may be that you want to change some of the conventions used rather than the whole framework.