Active Server Pages for Not Yet Techies 2

"Computer Careers: High Tech Jobs Building Smart, Interactive Web Pages the Microsoft Way"

by Richard Stooker, President Info Ring Press and author of Secrets of Changing to a Computer Career

To speed development of a more interactive, advanced Web, Microsoft created Active Server Pages

Active Server Pages is a "server side scripting environment." Which means that the Active Server Pages technology runs on the web site’s computer, not on the visitor’s computer.

ASP -Active Server Pages - supports and works with many other Web technologies, such as Microsoft’s ActiveX, JavaScript, VBScript, DHTML and Java.

An Active Server Pages page is basically an HTML page with ASP statements

Active Server Pages modifies the HTML in some way, depending of course on the situation. You've found one when you see ".asp" at the end of an URL instead of ".html" or ".htm."

For example, if you’ve ever bought anything directly from a major commercial web site, chances are good that ASP (Active Server Pages) read over the information you put into the order form, evaluated whether it was valid and then returned to you some sort of thank you for your order, including your name printed right there on the page.

A business web site showing a page with our name on is commonplace now, but it was impossible years ago. In the beginning of the Web, anything displayed on a web page had to first be coded into the HTML by a human being.

ASP controls the appearance of text on a web page and all HTML tags

Before Active Server Pages, order forms, questionnaires and such things were controlled by CGI (Common Gateway Interface) technology. The information in the form was sent to the web site server, and then processed by a special program, usually written in C, C++ or PERL. CGI is still very common on the web, but it has many limitations, especially for the web servers. CGI is a lot of work and a security risk for them.

Some big companies use them, including Dell, HotBot and Barnes and Noble

They also tracks you the web site visitor while you’re at the site, so the company can evaluate which pages on the site are working the best. They also work with databases. Once your order is accepted, all your information goes into a database of customers.

They also allows visitors to send email from your site, and you to receive it.

To create applications you can use Microsoft’s Visual InterDev™.

It contains a Rapid Application Development (RAD) tool. for creating them. You can also use Allaire’s Cold Fusion and Visual Basic Web. They can be extended by components written in other languages.

Not all companies are using Active Server Pages by any means. You need a server running on Microsoft's NT server software. But by learning ASP, in addition to the basics such as HTML, can increase your chance of getting a good computer job as a web site developer.

Next: Visual InterDev

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