ASP Programming Tutorial

Active Server pages (ASP) is a server side scripting environment that you can use to create dynamic Web pages or build powerful Web applications. ASP pages are files that contain HTML tags, text and script commands. ASP pages can call ActiveX components to perform tasks, such as connecting to a database or performing a business calculation. with ASP, you can add interactive content to your Web pages or build entire Web applications that use HTML pages as the interface to your customer.

About Active Server Pages

Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP) is a server side scripting environment that your can use to create and run dynamic, interactive Web Server applications. With ASP, you can combine HTML pages, script commands, and ActiveX components to create interactive Web pages or powerful Webbased applications, ASP applications are easy to develop and modify.

The Active Server Pages Model

An ASP script to run when a browser requests an asp file from Web server. Your Web server then calls ASP, which reads through the requested file from top to bottom, executes any script commands, and sends a Web page to the browser. Because your scripts run on the server rather than on the client, your web server does all the work involved in generating the web pages that you send to browsers. You need not worry whether a browser can process your scripts. Your Web server does all the script processing, transmitting standard HTML to the browser. Server side scripts cannot be readily copied because only the result of the script is returned to the browser. Your users cannot view the script commands that created the page they are viewing.

What's New In Asp

Active Server Pages has been enhanced with features that make it easier to use while developing applications.

Microsoft Script Debugger

You can use the Script Debugger to interactively debug asp files.

Transactional scripts

ASP pages and the objects used on the page can be run under a transaction context. All work done on that page will either be committed or aborted. Transactions protect your applications from failures that might cause loss of data.

Administration tool

Many application settings are now available in Internet Service Manager, the administrative tool for Internet Information Server and Personal Web Server (on Windows NT workstation)

Isolated ASP applications

You can now isolate ASP applications so that they run in a separate memory space from the Web server. This protects your other applications, and the Web server, in case an application fails. It also makes it possible for you to stop an application and unload its components from memory without stopping the Web server.

File upload

Browsers can now upload files to the Web server by using the Posting Acceptor application. You can write ASP scripts to send email with information passed from the Posting Acceptor., such as the location and name of each uploaded file.

Application root changes

The root directory of an ASP application can now be a physical directory within your web site. Previously, the root directory had to be virtual directory. You can now use Internet Service Manager to indicate the root of an ASP application. You must put asp files in an application tree for the Web Server to detect changes to the files and automatically reload them.

Support for Internet Explorer 4.0 channels and Web Casting ASP automatically tells Internet Explorer 4.0 when it is sending a file containing channel definition commands. You can now use ASP to 8generate channel definition (.cdf) files. Internet information server and Personal Web Server support the HTTP 1.1 protocol. This support enables ASP to take 'Advantage of efficiencies in the new protocol when responding to a browser that supports HTTP 1.1. For example, ASP uses chunked transfer encoding to improve network efficiency when returning pages to a browser.

Using Scripting Languanges

Active Server Pages provides a framework for using existing scripting languages, such as Microsoft VBScript and Microsoft Jscript, in an HTML page. This section explains how to create an ASP page, how to add scripting language statements, and how to perform basic tasks such as creating an instance of an object.

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