An ASP file can contain text, HTML tags and
scripts. Scripts in an ASP file are executed on the server
What you should already know
Before you continue you should have some basic understanding
of the following:
- HTML / XHTML
- A scripting language like JavaScript or VBScript
If you want to study these subjects first, find the tutorials
on our Home page.
What is ASP?
- ASP stands for Active Server Pages
- 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
- ASP is a Microsoft Technology
- To run IIS you must have Windows NT 4.0 or later
- To run PWS you must have Windows 95 or later
- ChiliASP is a technology that runs ASP without Windows OS
- InstantASP is another technology that runs ASP without
Windows
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 your ASP code can not be viewed from
the browser
- Clever ASP programming can minimize the network traffic
Important: Because the scripts are executed on the server, the
browser that displays the ASP file does not need to support scripting at all!
