What is ASP?
What is ASP and how does it work?
ASP stands for Active Server Pages and is originally a Microsoft technology.
With ASP you can make websites with a dynamic character. By this we don't mean (interactive) animations, but websites
that show different data, for instance from a database, because of actions by the user.
With ASP you can build applications like search engines, product catalogues or shoppingbaskets in a webshop.
Like an 'ordinary' website contains HTML files, an ASP website (or ASP application) contains ASP pages. An ASP
page looks like HTML, but also contains scripts that have to be executed on the server before the result is sent
to the browser. The result of a script might show data that came from a database.
If a browser requests a HTML file, the content of the file is sent to the browser unchanged. With ASP that's different,
this is what happens:
- a browser requests an ASP file
- the web-server calls ASP
- ASP reads the ASP file
- ASP executes the (server-)scripts in the file
- The result of the script sections replace the script sections in the file
- The result is sent to the browser as HTML
What can you do with ASP and what are the advantages?
You can really do a lot with ASP and it's very easy to learn. Amongst others you can show and change the content
of databases, process HTML-forms and adjust pages to the wishes of individual users. There are many more possibilities,
but you'll notice that when you start working with it.
ASP is much easier to program then for example CGI (Common Gateway Interface), because ASP handles a lot of the
communication with the browser for you. Therefore you only have to concentrate on the data (and the layout) that you
want to send to the browser. Because ASP is sent to the browser as a regular HTML file,
it doesn't matter with what browser you look at it. This also means that the program (script) code you write is safe,
since it isn't sent to the browser.
Where can you find more information?
There are more lessons on this website that will teach you how to work with ASP. You can do the lessons one by one
by going to the next lesson, or choose lessons from the overview.
You can also attend one of our ASP classes.
On the mailinglists you can ask questions about ASP. Other members that program ASP
can probably answer your questions, but just by reading the questions and answers on the mailinglist you can learn a lot
too.
If you want to learn more about, for example, HTML, take a look at W3 Schools or at our links.
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