About ASP

The most familiar and commonly known technology is the Active Server Pages which is shortly known as ASP. This technology is used in order to create dynamic and interactive web pages. These Active Server Pages make use of server side scripting in order to create dynamic web pages that are not pretentious by the type of browser the internet visitor is working.

VBScript is the default scripting language which is used for writing ASP though few other scripting languages like Java Script can also be used. Active Server Pages have the extension as .asp instead of .htm. Any web page containing ASP cannot be run by just viewing the web page in a particular browser. The web page must be requested and demanded through a server that abets ASP and for this reason ASP refers and stands for Active Server Pages.

When a browser requests a web page with the extension .asp the server recognize and identifies to understand and interpret several ASP enclosed within the web page previously sending the HTML created to the web browser. This is how all the Active Server Pages run on the web server and no ASP will be conceded to the web browser. This guarantees that an Active Server Page will function and toil with any web browser. This is what it is generally denoted as a server side technology. It is very much easier to maintain an Active Server Page because it includes Server Side Technology.

Active Server Pages was initially launched and established by Microsoft on its web server. The IIS that is the Internet Information Services that executes on Windows 2000 or Windows XP Pro/NT4. These are the web servers were the ASP pages generally executes and runs good on. People using Windows and also curious to work with ASP on their PC must have to install the Microsoft IIS. The IIS or PWS (Personal Web Server) comes at no cost with Windows.

Generally Windows users could get IIS or PWS in the following given places.

Windows 98 – Here the Personal Web Server would be found under 'add-ons' on Windows 98 CD.
Windows 2000/XP – Here the Internet Information Services can be visualized in ‘Add or Remove Programs’ in the Control Panel.
Windows NT4/95 – IIS can be embraced by just downloading the NT4 Option Pack from Microsoft.
Windows XP Home Edition – This OS does not supports IIS and PWS.
Windows ME – This Operating System does not support IIS and PWS.

An ASP file is very much similar as an HTML file. An ASP file can enclose text, XML, HTML and also scripts. Using scripts in an ASP file are carried out an executed on the server. An ASP file has the extension as .asp. This extension helps to identify the file that it is an ASP file. An ASP file slightly differs from an HTML file and the major differences are,

When a browser requests or demands for an ASP file, the Internet Information Services passes the request to the ASP engine. Then the ASP engine interprets the ASP file, line by line and it executes the scripts in the file. At the end, the ASP file is revisited to the browser as simple HTML.

ASP permits to amend dynamically, modify or insert any content of a web page. The major feature and advantage of using the Active Server Page as an alternative of CGI and Perl is the effortlessness and speed rate. Using the ASP, it provides safety and security to the data as the ASP code cannot be observed and visualized from the browser. Intelligent ASP programming can reduce the network traffic.

Nila - ASP