ASP.NET: What is the connection between forms authentication and membership?

Question

As I understand it "forms" is just a method to authenticate users. Is this correct?

But what "membership" really is I don't know. I've written a custom membership provider but I still don't really see what "membership" is about it if I'm using a custom user table and custom roles table.

So what is forms?

And what is membership?

Answer 1

By "forms" it means we use a web form to facilitate authentication. Where as Membership gives us built-in way to validate and store user credentials.

Answer 2

"Forms" authentication is using the ability to use a form to authenticate a user through them entering a username and password. This is in contrast to using Windows authentication.

"Membership" is a way of storing information against a certain user once they have been authenticated and are logged into the system.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

As far, as I understand:

• Forms is a method to identify requests. it's provide mechanism to store and check authorization cookies in a secure way.
• Membership is a "backed" service for forms, that verifies provided credentials across SQL, ActiveDirectory and others.