Active Server Pages
or ASP, as it is more commonly known, is a technology
that enables you to make dynamic and interactive web
pages.
ASP uses server-side scripting to dynamically produce
web pages that are not affected by the type of browser
the web site visitor is using.
The default scripting language used for writing ASP
is VBScript, although you can use other scripting languages
like JScript (Microsoft's version of JavaScript).
ASP pages have the extension .asp instead of .htm,
when a page with the extension .asp is requested by
a browser the web server knows to interpret any ASP
contained within the web page before sending the HTML
produced to the browser. This way all the ASP is run
on the web server and no ASP will ever be passed to
the web browser.
Any web pages containing ASP cannot be run by just
simply opening the page in a web browser. The page must
be requested through a web server that supports ASP,
this is why ASP stands for Active Server Pages, no server,
no active pages.
As ASP was first introduced by Microsoft on it's web
server, Internet Information Services (IIS), that runs
on Windows 2000/XP Pro/NT4, it is this web server that
ASP pages usually run best on.
For those of you running Windows and wish to play around
with ASP on your own system you will need to install
Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS). Lucky
IIS or its micro version Personal Web Server (PWS) comes
free with Windows.
For Windows users you can find Internet Information
Services (IIS) or Personal Web Server (PWS) in the following
places: -
- Windows XP Pro/2003/2000 - IIS can be found in
'Add/Remove Programs' in the 'Control Panel'.
- Windows 98 - PWS can be found under 'add-ons' on
the Windows 98 CD.
- Windows NT4/95 - You can get hold of IIS by downloading
the NT4
Option Pack from Microsoft (don't be fooled by
the name as it also runs on Windows 95).
- Windows ME - IIS and PWS are not supported on this
operating system.
- Windows XP Home Edition - IIS and PWS are not supported
on this operating system.
For those of you running other operating systems or
web servers Sun produce a product called Chili!Soft
ASP which enables ASP to be used on other web servers
including, Apache, I-Planet, Zeus, Red Hat Secure
Server, etc, using various operating systems including,
Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, etc. You can find out
more information on Sun Chilli!Soft ASP or download
a trial version from, http://www.chilisoft.com.
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