What exactly are Active Server Pages?
This FAQ describes in beginner’s terms what, exactly, Active Server Pages are, and how you can use them to develop dynamic Web sites! • ASP’s Server Side Languages This FAQ discusses the options one has in choosing what server-side language they wish to use to implement their ASP applications. • The Response Object This FAQ discusses the Response object and several of its properties. • Variables in ASP This FAQ discusses how to declare and use variables in ASP using VBScript as the server-side scripting language. • Functions in ASP This FAQ discusses how to write functions in ASP • Using Includes This FAQ discusses how to use server side inclues (SSI) in ASP • ADOVBS.inc… use it! This FAQ discusses what ADOVBS.inc is, and why you should accustom yourself to using it on your ASP pages. • Why ASP? This FAQ discusses the benefits and pitfalls of ASP. Before you decide on using ASP, you must make sure it is the right solution for you!
Active Server Pages, commonly referred to as ASP, is Microsoft’s solution to server-side scripting. With simple HTML pages, the client (a web surfer) requests a web page from a server (some www.blah.com). The server just sends the file to the client, and the page is shown on the client’s browser. With Active Server Pages, the server gets a chance to alter the file before sending it to the user. So, for every request for a file with a .ASP extension, the server runs the file through a DLL called ASP.DLL, which parses the ASP commands. To use Active Server Pages you must be running a Microsoft webserver; Microsoft makes a number of Web servers that are freely available. If you have Windows NT 4.0 Server installed, you can download IIS 3.0 or IIS 4.0, both of which support ASP development. If you have Windows 2000, you can use IIS 5.0. If you have Windows 9X or Windows NT Workstation, you can use Personal Web Server (PWS). All of these products can be downloaded for free from Microsoft’s
