Have you ever heard OWIN and Katana? In this article, we will talk about OWIN and Katana for ASP.NET.

OWIN defines a standard interface between .NET web servers and web applications. The goal of the OWIN interface is to decouple server and application, encourage the development of simple modules for .NET web development, and, by being an open standard, stimulate the open source ecosystem of .NET web development tools.

Katana is a flexible set of components for building and hosting OWIN-based web applications.

Katana is not a revolutionary new project in ASP.NET world. It is just a next step in ASP.NET, The points that drive to go for Katana and OWIN are, Basically ASP.NET was optimized for two types of customers one classing ASP developers and second one LOB(line of business app) developers. From the beginning it was expected to run these applications under IIS (internet information services). Challenges are, as ASP.NET is part of .NET Framework which is shipping in every two to three years and the Web is moving little faster than .NET FW. How do you get these new web concepts faster to customers? The way that ASP.NET was built everything was put in to one assembly System.Web. It is highly coupled. More over all the features in this assembly are turned on by default; you have to explicitly turn it off for those features that you do not like. There is only one hosting option ie IIS.

Solution 1 – OOB ASP.NET MVC comes out of from the .NET FW and enabled more rapid ship cycle. MVC was not shipped as part of .NET FW and it is shipping with Nuget.

Solution 2 – Break Dependency, this was come with Web API. It is designed to break the dependency with System.Web. Web API has no dependencies on System. Web and it is completely decoupled.

So the need for Katana is Modern Web applications need the ability to compose multiple frameworks in a single server. When you think about Modern Web Applications you have got static HTML files, Web API, Rendering engines like MVC and SignalR. The burden of all these four things self-hosting independently spinning of four processes so the idea is take these four and compose them into a single pipe-line then you can host in self-host or IIS.

IIS is a process manager. OwinHost is a standalone executable that can start up an OWIN application. The new thing is WebListener which is ultra-light-weight server component where you can expect pretty amazing performance results.

Server start -> Your app’s startup -> Auth – Static files – Web API

The server starts up and immediately it looks for your Apps code which your app is going to create a pipe-line for like Auth, Static files or Web API and returned that back to the server. The requests are go through these pipelines.

By default the FW looks Startup class which has got a method Configuration which takes a IAppBuilder interface type.call use method to call your pipeline.

ASPHostPortal.com OWIN and Katana ASP.NET Hosting infrastructure features independent email, web, database, DNS and control panel servers and lightning fast servers ensuring your site loads super quick! Reason why you should choose them to host your OWIN and Katana site:

Best Programming Support – ASPHostPortal.com hosting servers come ready with the latest ASP.NET version. You can get access directly to your MSSQL from their world class Plesk Control Panel.

Best Server Technology – The minimal specs of their servers includes Intel Xeon Dual Core Processor, RAID-10 protected hard disk space with minimum 8 GB RAM. You dont need to worry about the speed of your site.

Best and Friendly Support – Their customer support will help you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year to assist you.

Uptime & Support Guarantees – They are so confident in their hosting services they will not only provide you with a 30 days money back guarantee, but also they give you a 99.9% uptime guarantee.

World Class Control Panel – They use World Class Plesk Control Panel that support one-click installation.