Summary
The Membership system, new to ASP.NET v2.0, provides an easy way for programmers to manage user data. A well-documented API of static methods and classes enables us to manipulate user data without worrying about the underlying data store. ASP.NET by default provides a Microsoft Access database to store this data.The provider model creates an abstraction layer between the Membership and Roles classes and a data store. This means that programmers can always use these familiar classes, but they can still alter the underlying data access to suit their needs. With classes derived from the abstract MembershipProvider and RoleProvider classes, these custom providers can be specified for use in place of the default provider that uses an Access database. Configuration is a simple matter of altering the web.config file.Several ready-to-use server controls are available to largely automate the process of identifying registered users. These controls can be declaratively used within a page with little to no programming necessary.