ASP (Active Server Pages)
Introduction
ASP is a powerful tool for making dynamic and interactive Web pages. An ASP
file can contain text, HTML tags and scripts. Scripts in an ASP file are
executed on the server.
What is ASP?
- ASP
stands for Active Server Pages
- ASP
is a Microsoft Technology
- ASP
is a program that runs inside IIS
- IIS
stands for Internet Information Services
- IIS
comes as a free component with Windows 2000
- IIS
is also a part of the Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack
- The
Option Pack can be downloaded from Microsoft
- PWS
is a smaller - but fully functional - version of IIS
- PWS
can be found on your Windows 95/98 CD
ASP Compatibility
- To run
IIS you must have Windows NT 4.0 or later
- To run
PWS you must have Windows 95 or later
What is an ASP File?
- An ASP
file is just the same as an HTML file
- An ASP
file can contain text, HTML, XML, and scripts
- Scripts
in an ASP file are executed on the server
- An ASP file has the file extension ".asp"
How Does ASP Differ from HTML?
- When a
browser requests an HTML file, the server returns the file
- When a browser requests an ASP file, IIS passes the request to the ASP engine. The ASP engine reads the ASP file, line by line, and executes the scripts in the file. Finally, the ASP file is returned to the browser as plain HTML
What can ASP do for you?
- Dynamically
edit, change, or add any content of a Web page
- Respond
to user queries or data submitted from HTML forms
- Access
any data or databases and return the results to a browser
- Customize
a Web page to make it more useful for individual users
- The
advantages of using ASP instead of CGI and Perl, are those of simplicity
and speed
- Provide
security – since ASP code cannot be viewed from the browser
- Clever ASP programming can minimize the network traffic.